


Mine / Yours

by Okkkay



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, M/M, Prequel, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Worldbuilding, rural life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:31:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 49,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okkkay/pseuds/Okkkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inferno is running an energon farm that gets robbed too often, and his only affordable way out is buying a glitchy, worn-out security expert. For him, Red is much more than a slave. A friend, an ally... and an infinite source of trouble. Warnings inside the warning-y chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My status / Your status

**Author's Note:**

> Written for http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/7561.html?thread=7185289#t7185289

The Autobot was dragged along the corridor, his heels made a screeching noise on the rust-free metallic floor. The whole Decepticon base was still under construction, everything brand-new, everything spotless. Even the guard drones were shining like chrome. Brand-new models before a field test, the Autobot groaned. These things are soon going to be used in real battle. Against Autobots.  
The few ‘Cons no longer bothered with him. He was already beaten half offline, his circuitry was dulled by a pair of stasis cuffs. Most certainly, he had seen better days....  
\--------------------------

„OK, Inferno, I’ll make a deal with you. I will help you repair the energy lines, you help me choose the transport mech.”  
„That’s blackmail.”  
Bulkhead looked his neighbor in the optics. Being sorry about his loss of revenue, third time this quartex, would not help his need for friendly advice.  
„Look. I know you have a great sense for... what you call them, impressions? I need someone who’s like Horsepower was in his younger days.”  
Inferno grabbed the green robot by the shoulders.  
„We have not bought Horsey from an auctioner. He had been our best worker not because anyone ever paid for it. He had been chosen from a responsible maker and he had been treated as a cohort-mate from the first day. And you know what? I think it was only obvious back then that we will take care of him when he retires.”  
Bulkhead turned around and transformed. His combined harvester mode blasted black smoke onto Inferno’s red plating.   
“Look, Bulky. I know. I know you intend to keep him well. But with buying another mechanism, you will give your financial support to slavers. It’s keeping up a vicious circle. Today, you buy a slave. Tomorrow, they will catch a new one to be sold. In a vorn’s time, who knows if it won’t be you whom they sell?”   
Bulkhead harrumphed. This wasn’t their first argument about slavery, it certainly wasn’t going to be the last. But he needed a transport mech and Inferno had a good optic for loyalty and endurance. Most villagers were convinced that whenever he said his judgement, he had been looking for the traits of his own Horsepower. The (now retired) beast had set his standards very high.  
“And besides, Inf. I tried contractors. I tried giving last chances. I fraggin’ signed contract with the Charity Fuel Program – they could have taken half the crop if they helped me safely deal the other half. It’s time I get a mech for myself.”  
With that, he rolled out of Inferno’s barn.   
Inferno turned back to the energy line he had been welding together, merely blinking at his friend over his shoulder. He needed to get at least a megamile’s length of severed lines functional before he’d go after Bulkhead and see what kind of mechs the traders had with them this time. 

.

The sellers’ camp was just as Inferno remembered from last time. Two heavily armoured trucks surrounded a dirty tent, and a tribune had already been set up. Villagers already started evaluating the mechs inside the makeshift storage house, and a huge red countdown indicated the time left before the afternoon auctions. He picked up Bulkhead’s energy signature from inside the tent, so he walked in without noticing the “Please ask for assistance before entry” note.   
He did notice, however, the panicked scream and the unmistakable noise of a mech falling on the ground, then the clinking of trembling kibbles. Inferno rushed to the source of the sound. It took him less than a nanosec to diagnose the mech’s muted seisure as a glitch-down, and he acted on reflex: he pinned down the white and red being with his left hand and his entire weight, then slid his other hand’s fingers inside his neck, blocking one of the main energon cables. A moment later, he slid his right hand on the left side of the mech’s neck, then blocked the other energon cable too.   
The mech tried to writhe away, although he seemed to be doing so without any conscious functions. His optics were glowing in an almost white blue glow. After a few moments, however, the uncoordinated movements slowed down, the optics darkened to grey. When Inferno was confident that the mech went offline, he carefully released his grip on the cables and watched as the other slowly started to boot.   
“Hey, you!” he heard one of the traders from behind him. “We don’t have that note on the door for nothing!”  
Inferno looked up at the bulky black mechanism. Those huge chevrons and enormous tyres had always made him feel weak.   
“Sorry, sir. I’m here because a friend of mine is looking for a transporter mech.”  
For as much as Inferno could tell, the black robot nodded. After the brightness outside, his optics were still on daytime settings, and he could mostly see in black and white for now – dark silhouettes against the sunshine behind the open door.   
“Transport, eh?” the trader hummed. “This way.”  
Inferno cast a last look at the rebooting mech.  
“Old freakout, don’t worry about him” the black one said. “He’s going to stay freaky like this. Thanks for silencing him, though.”  
“What’s the problem with him?” the farmmech asked.   
“As his former owner said, he’s too good at his job. He considers everything he’s not yet seen as some huge danger, and panics. We keep him as an alarm – noone’s getting in here behind our backs.”  
“I’ve seen that” the red mech nodded. “So where are the....? Oh, hi, Bulkhead.”  
The large green farmmech had been laying against the wall, watching as other villagers were evaluating the three identical-looking blue transport-mechs. The trader left them without saying a word.  
“Too big queue” Bulkhead murmured. “Granted, GranMac is only here for the feel of it, and Mouser and Click are certainly not going to buy a transporter of this price. Seen that? Their starting price will be one-and-fifty.”   
“The one in the middle’s worth it” Inferno said after a few moments of watching. “The one with the scratch on the left side of his head.”  
“How do you know?”  
“Just look at how he’s watching Co-Oper. He’s benign but will tear good old Cope’ in half if he would hurt his brother while examining him. They’re three-split twins, right?”  
Bulkhead kept staring in the direction of the three transporters and couldn’t see any differences between them.  
“The one on the right” Inferno continued “the biggest one. Look how he’s posing. He’s the best bargain, and he knows. Only, I wouldn’t trust him with what remained of my crops from yesterday, and that’s not saying much. He’s more of an egoist than a mech who’d actually get the job done.”  
Bulkhead hummed. This was what he’d asked for when he called Inferno along for the auction.  
“And what of the third one?”  
This time, Inferno only hummed back.   
“No idea. I would not give onehundred and fifty barkers for him, but onehundred would be a reasonable price.” Then he spotted the shop-shelves. Accesories, drones, spare parts had been lined in neat order. Expensive, he swallowed. He didn’t have much money, not with the fuel lines getting punched and the barrels of expensive medical-grade energon getting tapped more often than not. Maybe he should consider setting up a reasonable security system, he mused. Of course he couldn’t even afford half of the sensors needed, not to mention the hackproof network connections. He simply couldn’t afford to protect his crops, worse than that he hadn’t even had the faintest idea of what type of wild beast was stealing his product.  
With a sad sigh, he moved on to the white and chrome pair of mechs on display. These were clearly unsuited for any hard work in the fields.  
“Pretties” Bulkhead murmured.  
“Frag-toys with minimal agricultural benefits” Inferno replied. “Although really good-tempered. If they wouldn’t cost a fortune I’d suggest GranMac to buy the one in the corner.”  
Bulkhead looked at his friend.  
“I thought you were against buying slaves here. By the way, they cost so much because they are individually sparked.”  
“And because they were intended to be mostly used as status symbols” Inferno added with disgust. At the same time he had to admit that slaves that were regularly interfaced with, according to some studies, had had a tendency to develop extreme loyalty to their owners. Some of them would even starve themselves to death rather than accept fuel from anybot other than their master.   
Well, GranMac could maybe use that level of loyalty. She had a small inn called Death Row in the middle of the village, and her one-night guests kept taking away her property, be it elegant old energon cubes, cleaning drones, or security cameras. Recently her contracted waiter left her for a better paying job after just half a vorn of indentured service.   
Inferno gave the white and chrome mechs a better look. He guessed they both had some issues, because they had to be the leftover of the type after the traders had sold the others in the big cities already. Nevertheless, he pulled GranMac aside and asked if she’d like to ask them if there was anything they weren’t allowed to talk about.  
“They will say no” the lady immediately replied.  
“But the way they say no will give us a clue” Inferno explained to her.  
A ping on the public radio frequencies reminded everybot that the auction started in one breem.   
Only one of the two pleasure-bots replied too quickly to GranMac. The other also said no, but not because it was a pre-set answer, but he genuinely processed the question before saying no.   
“Then why were you not sold in Tyrest?” GranMac asked. “The caravan’s last stop was in Tyrest, wasn’t it?”  
“Yes, milady. The two of us” here the mech made a pause, as if choosing his words carefully “were the models on display. The gentlemechs there were only interested in the unopened models.”  
Behind his back, Inferno pointed at the talking one, and nodded. GranMac smiled and nodded back to him, grateful for the advise.  
The tent became almost empty as the second ping was aired. Those who intended to bid at the auction had lined up for the registry and those who only came to watch had settled on the high tribune seats from where the view was best.   
One of the large trucks transformed, and Inferno couldn’t tell whether this was the one that came after him when he silenced their “alarm”, or was it his co-molded. He couldn’t really bring himself to care, as he didn’t like either.  
First, the mech gave a semi-improvised speech about the sunny summer day and the smell of freshly produced energon and the welcoming hospitality of the inhabitants of New Argent. He continued with the praise of the good weather in the season and concluded that, with the well-known good morale of the village, the harvest will be great and plenty. The auctioneer’s conclusion, of course, was that this was the best time for the villagers to buy new workforce. At this point, Inferno stood up and went back to the tent.   
He approached it with more caution, this time. Despite his large frame, he sneaked in without making a sound. The “alarm” mech noticed him, of course, but this time, he only kept his frightened optics on him.   
He was sitting in a corner, his back against thin metal. He must have been watching the parade outside, and perhaps saying goodbye to the portable energon refiner who was the first mech to be sold today. Clearly the traders didn’t want the villagers to be saving their last shanix during the rest of the event. The starting bid was three hundred thousand shanix, the first offer to beat that was three hundred-fifty.   
“Fourhundred barkers!” the village’s only minibot offered.  
“Four-fifty!”  
“Cheepos! Sixhundred!”  
“Shut up, Cliffie! Save your money for next season! Seven hundred barkers!”  
“Seven-fifty!”  
“Seven-seventy!”   
“Seven-ninety!”   
“Eight hundred!”  
Meanwhile, Inferno positioned himself against the same wall, keeping a respectful distance from the other mechanism. He wasn’t sure if the mech recognized him as the one who disrupted his seizure, but he most certainly wasn’t considered to be a threat anymore.   
“You also hate it, right? Watching your friends being sold.”  
“Eight-twenty!” was heard from the outside.  
After a little hesitation, the mech shook his head.   
“You rurals take care of your properties. It won’t be bad for them on the long run.”  
“Eight-forty!”  
“Eight-fifty!”  
“Eight-fifty” the auctioneer echoed. “Eight-fifty thousand shanix, going once! Going twice!”  
“Fifty-five!”  
Inferno looked at the thoughtful face. Maybe the mech was right.... He watched closer. White frame, red highlights, perhaps his shoulder-wheels were a little too close to the torso, but overall, he was a very decent mech. His posture? Well, that clearly said, ‘I don’t mind your presence as long as you don’t have any ideas’.   
“Nine hundred barkers!”   
Suddenly everybot fell silent.  
“Nine hundred barkers!” the mech repeated. Inferno smiled to himself: of course Circuit had to arrive in the very last second. Or maybe it was below him to speak up before?  
Despite the tent’s metal shading most personal-range radio signals, Inferno caught a very clear message from Road Police. There was no need to decode it – and he guessed Circuit didn’t really bother, either.  
“Nine hundred thousand!” the black truck-bot repeated. “Going once at nine hundred thousand! Come on, who will offer more for this exceptional mechanism here?”  
Apparently, noone.   
“Nine hundred thousand shanix, going twice!”  
Circuit messaged back to Road Police, which was either an apology, or maybe it wasn’t.   
“SOLD!”  
There was a polite applause and a very strange sound as Circuit transformed to robot mode. There was a tiny tone of wear in that metallic rustle. Probably he transformed too rarely from his racecar mode.  
“They are a team of six” Inferno explained to the mech sitting against the same wall as he. “They reside on the northern slope, equally far from the heavily inhabited areas of Tagan Capital, Tyrest, and Praxus. Yes, I’m sure they will treat their refiner with respect.”  
“I hope so.”  
The white mech’s face hardened as the other trader called the three-split twins to the side of the stage. The biggest one, whom Inferno considered to be an egoist, was the first.  
“This wonderful transporter here is named, quite accordingly, Best! He can carry six kilotonnes of cargo with the most recent development of subspace technology! His loading time is only two breems, and he can even carry an additional half kiloton in normal space even when he’s fully loaded! Depending on his cargo, the fuel consumption....”  
Inferno blinked at the white-red mech whom he considered to have been sitting beside him.   
“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go” the red mech said as he stood up. “Goodbye.”  
The other mech looked at him, as if grateful for his time. “Goodbye, sir.”

.

As he suspected, Inferno found Bulkhead in the front row.  
“At last, where have you been? I thought you’d miss out the best part.”  
“I heard that the Turbo Team bought the refiner. Have I missed anything else?”  
“Yes, Cliffie’s evil look he cast at Circuit when he arrived. He wanted to expand his business really badly, but of course he knew he had no chance against an entire cohort.”  
“.... without leaving any unwanted scent in the cargo hold.” The auctioneer didn’t seem to be bothered by their little chatter in the front row. “He’s the best bargain at the starting price of one hundred and fifty thousand shanix!”  
Inferno cast a quick look at the black speaker, as if to make him shut up. He didn’t like these mechs at all.   
“Hold back, Bulky” he muttered. “Only go for the one with the head mark.”  
Bulkhead nodded, but couldn’t help listening to the price going higher and higher. He’d saved money, yes, but not this much....  
“Look at this wonderful item, the suspensions themselves are pieces of applied art. He can adapt to rough terrain so easily you won’t even notice.”  
“I hate that mech” Inferno muttered. “Of course I won’t notice because I’m not the one actually rolling through a stoneyard with hundreds of tonnes in my normal space cargo hold.”  
“Bear with him” Bulkhead muttered.  
“OK. I just wanted to distract you. You don’t have five hundred barkers to waste on an egomaniac. He heard too much praise in his life already.”  
Eventually, the auction ended at five hundred and sixty-five barkers. Cliffjumper paraded away to the coding relay with his bargain, and Inferno stepped closer to Bulkhead, touching his back kibble’s side to the green mech’s shoulder as a sign of support.   
“And here comes Quote! From the same manufacturer as his brother, Quote can store up to seven point one kilotonnes in subspace and has an additional four hundred tonnes of storage capacity in normal space. Loading time two point four breems, transport range three hundred megamiles without the smallest detectable change to the cargo.”  
“Even in normal space?” Inferno shouted, just for the fun of it.  
“I meant normal space” the auctioneer replied with an angry look.   
“Thank you sir.”  
“No need for trolling around” another farmer hissed next to him.  
“Sorry, Sides. This guy makes me feel like I forgot my manners at home.”  
Bulkhead considered himself lucky. Many of those villagers who placed bids on Best didn’t seem to be interested in a second prize – eventually he got Quote for two hundred and twenty thousand, with his only real opponent being his next-farm neighbor Sideswipe, who didn’t want to push the price too high for his fellow. Then Sideswipe got the third twin, Ever, for the starting price of one hundred and fifty thousand shanix.  
“Going once at one hundred and fifty!” the auctioneer shouted. “Come on, who will pay more for this wonderful item designed for hard work and little consumpion? Can store six point seven kilotonnes in subspace and threehundred tonnes in normal space, with the loading time of a very convenient two point eight breems in total. Who will pay one hundred and sixty thousand for him?”  
“Nobot!” Cliffjumper replied from the side of the stage. “You may not be aware, but I and Bulkhead both live on the Stormy Range, so does Sideswipe who just placed his offer. Noone living more than five megamiles further from us will bid on the third twin, as we are not barbarians to separate what was one spark in the beginning. Going once, going twice, all three of them are coming to Stormy Range regardless of how much more time you waste talking here. Do I hear a second of that?”  
Huge applause followed his words. The black trucks exchanged disappointed grins, and agreed that the villagers were sentimental softsparks, not businessmechs.   
In the back of the tent, the white security mech came to the same conclusion. These villagers were so different from the wealthy city-mechs he used to call his masters....


	2. My name / Your name

The Decepticon officer’s fully armed shuttle arrived at the half-built battle station. The mech had dark purple chassis with some red edges, an unusual purplish shade of red glow in his optics, and an unmistakable aura of authority that surrounded him. None of the other Decepticons on the base had ever met him in person, but most of them had heard more than enough of him and tried to get out of his sight as fast as they could.   
\----------------------------  
Inferno and Bulkhead spent the rest of the auction on the visitors’ tribune, the latter having jitters about soon getting his personal data imprinted to his first slave. Granted, he matured with his builder’s servant by his side, but that mech was a debtor and when finally his many vorns of servitude were over, he left for some asteroid behind Primus’s back and never returned. But this mech, named Quote possibly because of the scratch on his head that could be seen as a quotation tag if one squinted hard enough, this Quote would be his own.   
“Seriously, calm down” Inferno said. “A nervous new master won’t make a very good first impression.”  
“Maybe you.... hey, I already made a first impression, and I think he likes me! He was very polite and helpful and I’m certain he wanted me to win him.”  
“Then what’s all the fuss about?”   
“Inf, you can’t understand! Horsepower has been a constant in your life. Quote will be my constant.”  
“Horsepower has cybercrosis” Inferno murmured.  
“It is very well managed!” Bulkhead pointed out. “C’mon, Inferno..... All right, let’s talk about something else.”  
They heard a thunder of applause, which they joined, clapping their hands vigorously. Only after their cheerful surroundings calmed down did they notice GranMac rising to pay for one of the white and chrome pleasure-bots. Many of New Argent’s inhabitants would start visiting the small inn from now on.   
“Oh, I wanted to ask you before the traders would move on” Bulkhead remembered. “What do you think about the security mech?”  
“The delicate city-mech with the tendency for system crash? Dunno. Never thought about that. Why?”  
“The mech is an actual security expert. Or at least, he was until his glitch-outs became too frequent” Bulkhead explained. He guessed it well: Inferno hadn’t bothered to read the spec tech sheet of the mech.   
“And?”  
“And you seem to have a good influence on him.”  
Inferno refused to hear what Bulkhead was saying.  
“Think about him. The caravan moves on, the freakout will never get another chance of a normal life.”  
“No. I’m not buying him.” Inferno really didn’t like emotional blackmail he (correctly) suspected behind his neighbor’s words.  
“He would be good company. You would spend a lot of time, as you say, understanding him. You won’t be alone on the farm after Ho....”  
“Shut UP!”   
Bulkhead retreated with a sense of guilt. He really shouldn’t have reminded the red farmmech of Horsepower’s disease. There were traditional methods to manage cybercrosis to some degree, but it was far from a cure. He decided to leave Inferno alone for a while. Which actually lasted till the end of the auction.  
The crowd slowly dispersed, the tribunes’ stern panels started folding together and eventually they transformed into a trailer. One of the traders, who had been keeping track of the payments, had started filling out sheets regarding the transfers of ownership. The other was operating the recoder relay: he plugged into the device as the previous owner, the winner of the auction plugged in as the new owner. On the third side stood the property in question, this time, the startled and anxious Quote. While the two owners simply had to open their wrist panel for a thin wire, the young transport-mech was standing with cables connected to both sides of his helm. Humiliating, Inferno decided. It was a legalized form of public hacking. It also felt to be a very long process, although in reality it didn’t take longer than half a breem. After which Bulkhead shamelessly hugged his new property, who merely smiled a little.   
“I have uploaded the complete map of Stormy Range to Quote, so he can find the way on his own any time from now” Bulkhead explained. “Sideswipe told me it should be among the first files I install.”  
“And he promised me that I can visit my brothers anytime it doesn’t interfere with work or our schedule” the mech added. “Thank you for your faith in me, sir. May I call you by your designation?”  
“Sure thing. But: my designation. Inferno. Never ‘Inf’. Okay?”   
“Yes, Inferno.”  
“Good. Welcome on board. Bulkhead, would you please wait a klik for me?”  
The green harvester nodded without thinking about it. Then he asked, “Are you not planning what I think you’re planning?” By that time, the red mech was already by the side of the tent, and for the first time in his existence, seeking optic contact with a slave trader.  
“Sir, a moment please. Why didn’t you put the security mech up for auction?”  
“Stop kidding me. How do you think he would have reacted? He has a break-down and panic seizure whenever he sees a mech we’ve not deemed harmless before. Cog, over there, is the only one who can actually touch him. He gave the freak strict orders to stay calm while I put a single cuff on him, he ended up pulling the entire tent on himself before I could have grabbed his wrist. He’s a helpless case.”  
“My friend says he read the mech’s bio and he’s actually a security specialist. Is that so?”  
The black mechanism stared down at Inferno, who wasn’t a fragile mech otherwise.  
“There’s nothing wrong with the skills of the fool. Nor with the hardware. If he would be able to act normally, he would worth more than today’s income altogether. Sadly, that’s not the case. Now sorry, I need to pack the stage.”  
Inferno considered his chances. He may not be able to prevent the poor mech’s system failures, but he certainly was able to manage one of them, and he seriously started playing with the illusion that the pretty white mech trusted him. And what other options did he have? Getting another second-hand security system that gets hacked on the first night after it’s installed? Losing his energon farm to petrorabbits? He was tougher than that.  
“Sir.... how much?”  
The towering black truckbot thought about it for a moment, then asked the other one.  
“Hey, Cog. How much is the freakout?”  
The other black robot was just as clueless for an astrosecond. “I’d say, ten thousand. Don’t forget the stasis cuffs.”  
Inferno’s jaw dropped. A slave, a city-built expert of security, could not go for a price this low.   
“That’s still double of what his spare parts would cost” Quote murmured in the background.  
At the mention of his spare parts, the white mech had yet another crash of his data-processing systems. Inferno rushed into the tent to calm him down.  
“Thanks, we needed that” the trader at the relay hissed. He had finally finished recoding the rest of his goods to their new owners, and now he gave the thankless Quote a very angry look. The transporter didn’t seem to mind.   
Meanwhile, Inferno was holding the smaller mech’s neck cables tight, waiting for him to go offline. The mech’s processors must have been running on their last fumes of fuel, very reluctant to give up. This wasn’t simply about the mech being scared. No, he was dreading for his life. And he was a fighter.  
But Inferno was a farmmech, tough-built, heavy, and of the two of them, he was the one who at least partially knew what he was doing. And, eventually, his resources and patience lasted longer than the freakout’s miserable energy.  
When the white mech rebooted, he found himself at the coding relay. His two owners Cog and Wheel had been there, and the mech who intended to buy him. Everything set for the transfer.   
For the first time, he looked at the red mech as a potential owner, and he didn’t seem to like the thought. He liked Inferno, as company, yes. But he had too much bad experience with masters.  
“Hey, pal” the to-be owner whispered. “It’s OK. It’s OK to be scared. Guess what, I have never done this before. I inherited Horsepower from Infernalis – there was no need for any change in his coding.”  
Inferno kept talking to the mech, impartial to what the black trucks would think about them. “Listen, mech. I need you. You need me. So far, is it clear?”  
“Yes sir” the smaller mech muttered.   
“All right. Hold my other hand.” The white mech squeezed the red one’s palm, and the farm-mech had to admit he underestimated his physical strength.   
“Good. Now let Cog plug those cables into your helm.”  
He tried. He focused on the mech in front of him, the one whose hand he had quite possibly dented. He knew this was his last chance in his life, if he’d let the big red mech go, he would never get to do more than quiver in the trader’s subspace as he had been carried from one city to another.   
Then he fell on the ground in panic of losing this one little chance.  
Inferno was persistent. He plugged out from the coding relay, and walked to the other side of the device.   
“Double handshake” he suggested. Or requested. Or ordered, maybe.   
Hesitantly, the white mech placed his other hand in his free palm.   
“Good. Now let go of my hands and touch my either shoulder. Great. Now I will do the same to you.”  
Their audience was less than impressed. Wheel wanted them to hurry up, the other felt like they were being made fools of. Bulkhead wanted to get his new transporter home and see if he was worth the money he paid. Quote could tell that his two brothers were already on Stormy Range, and he missed them deeply already.  
Inferno had, gradually, made the white one accept the cable be touched to one side of his helmet.   
“That will do” the trader behind him decided. “The data transfer would be slow, but I hope it won’t let him crash during the process.”  
“Okay. Let’s speed it up.” With that, he gave the cable into the other mech’s small hand. “Do it, please.”  
Still hesitant, the security expert finally grabbed the end of the cable, and connected it into his own helm. For a moment, surprise was shining through his face, then he went just as passive as the other workers who were sold before.   
“Now or never” Cog said, and plugged his wrist-cable into the recoder relay in a hurry. Inferno followed suit.  
For a moment, he felt as if he were in two places. He was on two sides of the same table at the same time, and it took him a moment to register that he was seeing himself through the other mech’s optics. Faintly, he could feel another mech there, but only for a few astroseconds.  
It was odd how his time perception was unaffected while everything else was.   
The other presence disappeared completely, at least, from his part of their connected minds. A polite demand came through from the other robot, asking for his personal factory data. He sent his identifying information across, and soon a longer survey popped up in front of him. There was also a reminder that he can change these settings anytime.  
Some of the asked data was trivial. What behavior the master didn’t allow, how should he be addressed, who else the slave should, can and cannot obey. At this point, Inferno gave Bulkhead’s personal data as the second mech on his obedience list. Then he listed everyone from the village as “optional”. It would be up to the situation, and the current opinion of the security expert.   
There was another part for the daily routine and work description. Inferno had thought he lived a very consistent life, with more or less the same activities. To his own surprise, however, most of his answers were ‘it depends’.   
There was yet another set of questions, labelled ‘Berthing’. He decided he’d skip the entire question block, but his curiosity got the better of him. The very first question was ‘Spike / valve preference’. He took a look at the answer log, and found that all of the mechling’s former owners had chosen ‘spike’. Inferno decided he didn’t want to know the rest of their answers.   
He skipped the rest of his own personal settings, and picked up the information files of the security mech’s past. The looming presence of the other owner finally disappeared. The transfer of ownership was complete.  
Map, Inferno remembered. Bulkhead told him to give his new worker a map. Immediately afterwards, he realized that the place must be a horror in the optics of a safety expert. Why else would the local wildlife be able to severe the fuel lines? Eventually, he uploaded a password-protected file and told the mech not to read it unless necessary. He also explained why.   
The mech had a flash of fear at this point. Inferno wasn’t sure if he had actually managed to keep calm for his new master, or was it simply the coding relay blocking his reactions.   
They were done. Or were they? Something felt to be missing. Inferno started to read through all the questions he answered. The very first question was the name of the new owner.  
But what about the slave’s name, for Primus’s sake?!   
The security mech popped up a list of words by which his former masters had addressed him. Some were endearing to a degree, most were rude or degrading. Others were nothing but a code for the security system he installed and operated with. After he ruled out these options, ‘Freakout’ was on the top of the names that remained on the list. ‘Alert’ was the second.   
‘Alert’. By no means humiliating, yet very matching, and it actually was a name he wouldn’t be ashamed to cry out loud in public. He read more about this name in the security-mech’s past. Apparently, being ‘Alert’ preceded him being ‘Glitchout’ ‘ Freaky’ and ‘Useless Idiot’.   
There was another mech of the same name, however. When he was running by the designation ‘61-8-SEN’ there was a deeply respected white and green Seeker by that name. There had to be some distinction, then. ‘Grounder Alert’ didn’t sound too good. ‘White Alert’ neither, as the flier was also mostly white. ‘Red Alert’, then. Yes, Inferno decided. ‘Red Alert’ will do.   
His sensors were online during the process, and he very clearly detected how much everybot around him wanted them to get gone. He logged out, and considered hugging his new worker like Bulkhead did only a breem ago. He remembered just in time that Red Alert’s fidgety systems might consider that an attack. But when the mech grabbed his free hand in gratitude, he didn’t hesitate to pull him a little closer.   
“All right now, time to pay.” Wheel said cheerfully. “Ten thousand for the freakout, the stasis cuffs are sixteen, that’s twenty-six altogether.”  
“What?” Bulkhead objected. “The pair of stasis cuffs costs more the mech they’re to be placed on?”  
“I won’t need stasis cuffs” Inferno stated. He had Horsepower who was many times stronger than he was, and he never ever had to use stasis cuffs on Horsey. Why would a relatively weak city-mech need them?  
“You won’t be able to take him home” the other trader reminded. “He will break down at every corner.”  
“At best” Wheel agreed with him.   
“They have a point” Quote admitted reluctantly.   
“I can give you a discount” Cog finally offered. “Twenty-two for the entire set? Without guarantee, that is. Twenty-two if you don’t expect us to take him back when you give up struggling with him. Twenty-six if you want the guarantee.”  
Inferno grit his dental plates. He will not sell this poor mech in such miserable condition. Twenty-two thousand, laughable for an expert like Red Alert. The cheapest automatized security system would cost ten times more, without stasis cuffs.  
“All right. Red Alert, transform please and open your hood. I will put these on you in alt mode. Quote, may I ask you a favor?”

.

The way home was a horror for all four mechs involved. Despite the map, Quote kept making calculations of his fuel consumption, hoping he would make it to Stormy Range with his unplanned cargo before his tanks would dry out. In front of him, Bulkhead was struggling with the same concerns, as he knew the mech was sold to him with almost empty reserves.   
The stasis-cuffed Red Alert was just barely online for most of the time, and even then, his processing ability was severely limited. He focused most of his attention on the large red mech rolling beside him, and tried to ignore the rest of the outside world. That purple thing they just left behind could not be a predacon by any chance, right? It must have been his paranoia projecting the huge beast to the harmless rock on the way to the barn.   
The tiny convoy stopped between worn-down buildings, some of them were sheds and storages, one was an empty silo, and in the back, a garage with some additional rooms in the backs.   
So this was where Red Alert was going to spend the rest of his life. With his extraordinary programming, he would become a superb scarecrow in the outlands. So unlike the luxury he once belonged to, he was once part of. It was a huge step back for him, but it was his own over-reaction that got him to this point. At least, his new owner seemed sage and level-headed.   
He rose to robot mode as his master took off the stasis cuffs from his engine block, and looked around. Rocks, solar panels, thick energon cables, as far as the optic could see. He felt as if he were standing on the surface of a technorganic giant. He combined his GPS information with Cybertron’s map, and concluded that the nearest normal-size settlement was Tyrest, three hundred vuns southeast. Tagan Capital was almost four hundred vuns away, while Praxus was three hundred and twenty vuns north – but there was an entire mountain range and a gulf of the Rust Sea between them.   
“So, how do you like it?”  
“It’s.... quiet” Red Alert finally managed. He could of course not tell his new master that he was homesick for the urban fizz. Besides, he could not exactly cope with city life, so maybe the silence was for the better.   
His master threw the stasis cuffs to the top of a rusty cupboard, and grabbed four glasses. Red Alert couldn’t unsee the dirt and the dents on them.   
So he was rather shocked when Inferno poured medical-grade energon for all four of them, and raised his glass to the sky for toast.  
“To those present, old and new, to those who passed away, and those who moved from here in hopes of a better life elsewhere. To Primus who sparked us all, to the Allspark we will one day return to. To our bond of friendship and reciprocity, and our faith in each other.”  
“To the four of us here” Bulkhead added, raising his glass too.   
“To the future” Red Alert joined them. He wasn’t exactly sure if a toast over two new slaves was his place to speak up, but the glass of pure med-grade was an unmistakable invitation.   
“To our new lives” Quote said. They all clinged their glasses, then consumed their fuel full with hope.


	3. My glitch / Your glitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: post traumas coming up in this chapter, noncon and some more. M-rate is M-rate.

The Autobot rested his helm against the cool walls of his cell. The place of his broken-off audiosensor hurt, and he could feel the energon seeping from the wound.   
He heard footsteps. He tried to lift his head, but he was too weak for that. He’d recognised the snarky tone of his commander Jazz. So the ‘Cons have caught him too. Who will warn Optimus and the others of this new station, secretly built in neutral space? Who will get their Save-Our-Sparks message out?   
He was not going to give up on hope, no. He owed himself that much. He tried to be optimistic. At least he wasn’t alone.   
Things in his life always turned better when he wasn’t alone anymore.  
\------------  
After the neighbors had left, Inferno guided his new security expert around the estate.   
“Let’s go from left to right. This is the carriage garage here. Nothing really valuable here, but if a carriage gets damaged, the transport of energon is slowed down by it.”  
“It could be a good place to install the hub center of the security lines” Red Alert mused. If he was thinking about setting his watchplace relatively far from his master’s berth, he was doing his best not to show it. He knew how much it could hurt when his master was larger than him. He had the programming to handle size differences to a degree, but it couldn’t dull the pain entirely.   
“This could be one option of the many” Inferno nodded. “You will see. As I told you, I know the hardware is out of date. Once you identify the source of the problem, I will invest into some specific protection. But I cannot afford to set up an entire network, get the software, and then pay the upgrades every second quartex.”  
Red Alert looked around. As long as he was busy with security work, his masters tended to leave him to his job. When there wasn’t a warning signal in an entire cycle, however, then they started making other use of their slave. Of course he developed a habit of overreacting everything that COULD have been a threat, and he couldn’t break this habit later, no matter how hard he tried. He realized when his value had dropped dangerously, but a behavior that rooted this deeply in fear could not be overcome.   
“I have worked with worse hardware before” he muttered. “Though that was a one-time situation.”  
“Care tell me?” his master inquired. Of course he had seen the huge white holes in Red Alert’s memory banks, but he was hopeful.  
“My fourth master was an ore trader. He had mines on outer worlds, mostly asteroids, and I was his chief security officer. I had escorted him on his annual visit of all the mining and processing facilities, and halfway from one refinery to another, the spaceyacht’s engines gave out. We landed in the middle of an alcalic lake, there were hostile organics on the shores, the communication antennae were on the bottom of the vessel, and after two days, the pilot was in a fret because, as it turned out, he was hired by my master’s rival to get him killed yet nobody came to pay him. You can imagine how happy my master was.”  
“Yet here you stand, safe and sound. I have confidence in your expertise.” And he patted the smaller mechanism on the shoulder.  
He shouldn’t have.  
Panic filled the white and red mech, his frame tensed in preparation for the attack, but his alarm reaction immediately cascaded into a bout of self-protection. As his processor was full with the task of managing the danger, he had no capacity for further input of his sensors, nor for the real defense programming to activate. The more helpless he felt, the more his brain module burnt with the need to do something, and the more he focused on that, the more his frame ignored the messages coming to him from the outside world. And since he’d lost contact with reality in the middle of what he perceived as danger, he obviously felt even more helpless and the cascade was not going to stop until his CPU shut down.   
When he booted, he found himself on the floor of an old farm building with worn carriages towering around him.   
“I think it will take some time before I can touch you without your explicit permission” Inferno murmured, and offered a hand to help him up.   
Red Alert accepted the hand, but then just stared in front of himself, avoiding optic contact with his master.  
“I’m sorry, Inferno. For a normal slave it should be the most basic to let his master touch him anywhere, anytime. I’m not that normal slave. I apologize.”  
“Let’s just get back to work, then.”  
That seemed to do the magic. As long as Red Alert was busy with something predictably secure, he was fine. When they finished with the garage and one of the sheds, Inferno tried patting his shoulder again. This time, with due warning.   
Since he was standing behind Red Alert, he could clearly see the change in posture as the mech acknowledged the touch. It was inmistakably submissive. ‘Do what you want to me. I will not resist.’   
Inferno was careful to first place his left hand on Red Alert’s lower arm, a physical contact the panicky mechanism could see from the corner of his left optic. Then, with the other hand, he very gently patted the mech’s right shoulder and his upper wheel’s suspension.   
“It’s all right, Red Alert” the larger mech purred. “No need to be afraid. Worst that can happen at this time of the year is some animal sneaking in to pilfer the crops. Calm down, city-mech. You’re not in Tyrest anymore.”  
The white one whispered back a shivery thank-you. Then he realized that his master might demand a longer explanation. “I just.... I’m not used to this kind of contact.” Not that he wasn’t ever taken from behind, in a standing position, without even a wall to help him support their weight. But it was a long time ago. And that mech was the same height as the security specialist, not two heads taller like Inferno was.   
“You’ve been with Cog and Wheel for far too long” Inferno murmured, now resting both hands on the roots of his shoulder-wheels, thumbs playing with the tiny hatches in his plating that normally only open during his transformation. “I guess your condition wouldn’t have gotten this bad if they had bothered to spend some time with you.”  
“Actually” Red Alert said, bracing himself for the ripping pain in his valve that was due in any moment now “it was worse when my latest master sold me. When he finally sold me....”  
Inferno knew what he was seeing. It was a break-down, but not a system failure like those before. This was the smaller mech’s self-control giving out for a moment. Whatever that owner had done to the security expert, it had to be worse than being stored in a tent and carried from one auction to another. He leant forward to rub his own head to the white expert’s beautiful red helm, and held Red Alert tightly until the mech finally calmed down. It took more than three breems. Inferno didn’t mind that time – it was long, but far from wasted.   
“Better now?” he asked when he was sure the mech won’t collapse in front of him.   
“Yes, Inferno. Thank you. Could we go on with the security please?”   
The larger mech decided it wouldn’t help if he pressed too hard. Red Alert was panicky and prone to system failures, but until he felt home at the estate, his master couldn’t do much more to help his condition. Perhaps it only came through as harassment.   
He guided Red Alert through the mansion. It was in a mess and rather sleazy, the furniture displayed photodegradation, and a naked tube with a tap on the top stood for the energon dispenser.   
“As you can see, I was more busy repairing the energon cables out in the field, rather than wasting my free time on keeping tidy what was going to be covered in dirt in a matter of a quartex or less.”  
Well. There was some disappointment on Red Alert’s face. His expression turned even darker when Inferno mentioned that he normally cleaned up during the monsoon period, when he had nothing else to do.  
“Well, I have a few guest rooms if you want to sleep somewhere immaculate, city-mech. But you will have to keep it tidy.”  
An own room? That sounded too good. Well, maybe he would get an own room because his master wasn’t used to company in his home. Most likely. The mansion was big enough for the two of them.   
“Washrack?”  
“Outside. If you would spray out six hectos of panel lotion in one go, just once in your life, you would also understand why it’s better not to bring in all the mess on your chassis later.”  
Red Alert frowned. “I guess I get why you need a washrack outside. What I don’t: why isn’t there a washrack inside the house?”   
Inferno hoped this question was rhetorical.   
Next to the energon tap stood a wardrobe full with synthetic textiles. Not far from there was a cupboard with bottles of solvent. Red Alert nodded. This was a lot more to his taste.   
“Do you want to see the guest rooms, then? This way up.”  
There was a ramp, with gentle slope, and five mechanometers wide. Inferno couldn’t imagine why his new housemate was surprised at this. Was he expecting an elevator, or what?  
“Three rooms on this side of the corridor, two on the other side. Skip that room left to the ramp, and I expect you to never go in there.”  
Red Alert acknowledged the prohibition, but didn’t ask what it was for. Instead, he walked to the door next to the forbidden one, and took a look at it with a professional’s sensors.  
“Just out of curiosity. You call this a LOCKED door?”  
“It perfectly keeps the dust out” Inferno replied. “And I don’t have glitch mice, if that’s what you wanted to ask.”  
Red Alert gave a hiss that Inferno translated as a sign of mistrust.  
“They don’t survive the monsoon period on this climate” he explained.   
Red Alert opened the door without any difficulties. To his surprise, the room was tidy indeed. A berth, an adjustable lamp on the wall, a small energon dispenser with an elegant, handmade cube to be filled. Gorgeous view at the valley in front of them, with Tagan Capital in the background.   
“You like it?”  
“Yes!”  
“Do you like it as much as to keep it tidy?”  
“Yes, Inferno!”  
“Good. Come, I think we still have the silo and the green shed.”  
The silo was nothing special. Inferno explained that once or twice in a quartex he buys preservatives that are later stored here until used. The green shed was much more interesting, as it was full with barrels that had a glowing green ‘Hazardous waste – for drone fuel only’ marking on them.   
“The contents of these barrels should never mix with energon or the soil around the solar panels. Absolutely not. If you find one leaking, you’d better burn up everything in four metric radius.”   
“Does it kill fast?” Red Alert asked. Clearly, if his master would have wanted to tell what’s in those barrels, he would have done so.   
“I’d say, two or three orns of agony. It depends on the dose and concentration. Here are the full ones, the empties are over there. By full I mean, half. It’s safer not to fill the barrels entirely. By empty, I mean there are still remnants on the inside.” Red Alert nodded.  
Those were the buildings. Now Inferno guided the white mech to the solar field: huge panels set to the angle of Cybertron’s star, each on a pole that was about as thick as the city-mech’s arms together. An entire net of wires was laid on the ground, leading the energy to the canals at the sides of each field. In the canals, there were white and pink tubes, some of the latter seeping from different-sized holes.   
“The white tubes have Hummingsong’s Gel in them. It’s an empty transfer material that leaves no aftertaste if the gel was sunned before it was energified. Hence the color.”  
“I see.” Red Alert wanted to ask whether the pink tubes also needed to run uncovered, but he saved that question for later. Clearly the thieves were only interested in those, not in the white ones.   
“Those boxes at the end of each panel-line are the energifiers. They add the collected energy to the Hummingsong’s Gel and what we have here, is fresh sun-energon.” Inferno squatted down, disconnected a pink tube from the energifier, and showed how brilliant pink energon seeped from the small machine into his palm. Then he plugged the tube back, stood up, and smelled the precious material like a gourmech. It was hard to believe that the same mechanism cleaned his home once in an entire vorn. He drank the fuel almost ceremoniously, careful not to miss one tasty molecule’s aroma before swallowing it. “This is where good stuff begins” he whispered. “You city-mechs have no idea what sun energon tastes like. Here, you can drink as much as you feel like.”  
Red Alert wasn’t exactly fond of drinking energon from his palm, but having considered the amount of dirt on the glasses he’d seen in the first shed he didn’t feel like climbing up there just so that he could consume fuel in a semi-civilized way. He knelt down, disconnected the cable, and watched as the first drops seeped onto his palmar plates. Hesitantly, he blinked up at his master.   
Inferno was standing above him, with a gentle smile on his face. Well, what else was he expecting? He connected the cable back to the energifier, and raised his full hand to mouth level. The smell was good. The taste? Hmmmmm. The taste was DELICIOUS.  
“Divine” he said.   
“‘Divine’ applies to mined crystal energon, I suppose” Inferno corrected him “though I have to admit I’m not exactly a fan of that.”  
Red Alert turned his optics back to the energifier. His master said he could drink as much as he wanted, but he couldn’t be serious. Was he truly allowed to get a whole tankful of this sun-taste fuel?  
After two more gulps, he blinked at the red mech again. Which of his former masters had a feeding kink? Was it the third or the fourth one? He wasn’t sure anymore; they both had him such a long time ago.  
Inferno, however, didn’t seem to be interested in how he consumed fuel. He acknowledged the fact that the city-mech was able to drink without a glass or a cube, and he didn’t seem to mind the details. Red Alert took some more energon. Until now, he didn’t even realize how dry his tanks were. Two more gulps. And again, two more. After a point he didn’t even connect the tube back, only blocked it with a finger for that half astrosecond while he drank up what he had in his palm.   
He wondered if a rebuke was due sometime. He was brought here to tell his master to get the pink lines hidden underground, to explain why it was unsafe that anybot could just disconnect a cable and take away its contents. To get a closed-chain alarm system set on the tube network, then analyze the time and location of the thefts.   
He looked around, but could not see his master. He plugged the cable back in a hurry and stood up. How could a huge large mech disappear from here so fast?   
He had to re-define ‘so fast’. By now, his tanks were almost half full. He was having energon and meanwhile his master simply walked away. Awkward.   
Then he spotted a small red dot further down the hillside. While he was drinking, Inferno had moved on to repairing the torn cables. He transformed and rolled to his master’s side. He thanked for the fuel, as it was truly the best he’d ever consumed. Inferno murmured back a sparkfelt welcome and asked how long Red Alert expected it to take until they find who or what was stealing from the energon lines. The smaller mech summed up his impressions, and added that a simple wire-based sensor net could be easily built out of what source materials he had seen on the selves. That would be a good start.  
“Good, I will get the wires” Inferno transformed. “I have some rolls leftover from when we renovated the sinkers. I will be right back with you.” And away he rolled.   
Red Alert was left alone in the middle of a theft-plagued energon farm. So much unlike any of his former jobs. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life.   
This part of the farm was on a gentle hill slope, and at the roots of the panel-holding thick poles he could see the semi-organic soil under his wheels. He had heard so often that Cybertron has an organic core, but in the cities, he never got to see any proof of that. He relaxed and listened. In theory, he was so close to the Rust Sea that he should be able to hear the waves’ low murmur. And indeed he had.   
On his left side were the plains – solar farms on terraces as far as he could see. Behind him was the Stormy Range with Inferno’s mansion. That was the closest thing he had to a home, at the moment. Far above them were other farms. Confident that he won’t have a seizure of the low level of security (he already had that shock, to be honest) he opened the coded map file and identified the farms of Bulkhead, Cliffjumper, and, almost on the other side of the range, Sideswipe.   
In front of him was the Echobreak Valley, with its northern, cone-shaped part leading to the Rust Sea.   
He liked the place. Granted, it was dirty and undercivilized, modern technology was present only in the industrial equipment and barely anything for personal comfort, but it was quiet and calm and even the mechs here seemed to be more interested in the benefit of each other rather than trying to stab the other in the back. And despite the unspeakable mess he lived in, his own master seemed to be rather kind.   
Red Alert examined the next hole in the pink line. It had to be some kind of a bite mark, but much larger than what a petrorabbit would leave. Also, if glitchmice didn’t survive the monsoon, Red Alert had no idea how these larger pests would.   
His master returned with a huge roll of sensor-wires in tow.   
“Will this be enough for this parcel?”  
Red Alert’s face expression read positive.   
“Good. How do you suppose these to be placed?”  
The specialist hummed.   
“Right into the welds when they’re cooling. You scratch the insulation here, at least half a metric from the weld. This way it could provide us information, and the weld will keep it in place without fusing with it.”  
“Sounds good. I continue welding, you follow me with the wire, scratch it wherever you want, and position it into the weld by holding the two sides of the wire. Deal?”  
“Fine, Inferno.”  
They worked in silence for a while, with the red farm-mech only asking which way to go on at the end of the parcel. Red Alert suggested that they continue to the border of the farm, then turn right and place the sensors on the slope. He cut off several long sections of the wire and marked them according to the place of the line they’d belong to. Then he carried the further ends up to the carriages, and connected them to a makeshift marking system. He asked his master to touch one pipeline he had already repaired, and the homemade sensor system located him perfectly.   
They worked in sync till sunset. Sometimes Inferno asked about Red Alert’s life with his wealthy owners, and whether he missed any of them.   
“I miss travelling through deep space” Red Alert answered. “I miss sitting in my office in Helex, monitoring the entire polity and some of its neighboring ones. I miss the Praxians I worked with. I miss Metroplex – I was given to him as a creation day surprise, and he was the most caring master one can ever ask for. But eventually I was told I had a bad effect on him, which, knowing myself, wasn’t exactly a surprise. He gave me to a mech who’s a little more paranoid than I was at the time. I don’t have much recollection of him because he deleted everything about himself from my mind before he passed me on to a trader who soon sold me for a little more than one million shanix.”  
Inferno gasped. Of course, he remembered Wheel mentioning something similar, but to have a security expert who once cost over one million shanix was still incredible for him.   
“Do you have an idea where Metroplex is now?”  
“I wish I did. When he left, I tried to talk my master into searching for him, but of course he disagreed. He said that if there’s some source of danger out there that can hold a titan against his will, he didn’t want to see it first-hand.”  
“And?”  
“I had a seizure. It was my first full-out, blanking system crash. I had smaller errors before, but not that severe.” Red Alert considered saying something more about his program failures, but then decided to be silent about it.   
After the two of them wired almost half of the territory, they were both comfortably tired. Inferno, because he got to complete his chore in good company and the hopes of not having to go through that area again. Red Alert, because he got to do his job again after having travelled with the traders for so long.   
Inferno was sitting on the hillside, enjoying the cool blaze of the oncoming night. Red Alert was sitting next to his right, so close that their back kibbles almost touched each other.   
“Do you know that forty percent of Cybertron’s industrial output comes from Tagan? We may not be city-mechs like those in your world, but you have to admit we have some importance. Now that the sun’s down, you can see the glow of industrial lights over there.”  
“I guess some mechs even have in-house washracks in Tagan Capital” Red Alert smirked. “What if, for some reason, you cannot go outside yet have something on you you wish to get washed off?”  
Inferno giggled.   
“There’s nothing here that could not be sponged down with some good-smelling damperer. But to assure you: during monsoon, which is exactly the condition you’re talking about, most of these buildings are sank underground. Including the washrack. So yes, it can be reached from the house. Happy now?”  
“Thank you.”  
Inferno reached out with his right hand, and Red Alert leant closer to him, almost pressing his shoulder against his palm. Soon Inferno was rubbing his back, up and down on both sides. Red Alert, who was more than experienced in what a master usually wanted from his property when he was not on duty, placed his hands on the ground and lifted his aft in an indication that he understood his master’s desire and didn’t intend to escape what was about to come. And meanwhile, he secretly prayed to Primus that his frame won’t act otherwise. Because, well.... his crashdowns had a good reason in his past.  
For the first time, of course, the system failure was initiated by fear for those he was responsible for. But the situation very quickly escalated, and he had no control over the crashes. However, there was a pattern he couldn’t help but notice: whenever he had a glitch-out, his masters eventually left him alone. Except for the last one: that mech didn’t care that he was halfway out of his mind, if he desired an interface. Perhaps he even got off on spiking a mech who was having a seizure. The pain in his valve afterwards only enforced the foreboding: he was right to fear what was about to come.   
And now, here was Inferno. Kind mech, but large. This would hurt. But of course Red Alert didn’t want to deny this mech what was righteously his. In fact, he very much hoped that his brain wouldn’t break down when his master would take his valve. The red mech deserved some recompense for his patience with him.   
But the more he prayed his CPU wouldn’t fail him, the more he was certain it would. Because he was focusing on something he dreaded.  
“If I’d glitch-out again, I apologize in advance” he whispered. “Go on with whatever you have in mind.”  
“Maybe whatever YOU have in mind” Inferno replied. The delicate aft that was all but pressed against his caressing palm could not be read otherwise.   
He circled his hand on the left-side hip joint, and decided that the city-mech was built with an artist’s care, unlike anyone in the village. The mechs of New Argent were designed for heavy physical work. Red Alert was not.   
He slid his palm to the right side hip. So perfect symmetry. When he finished with that, he went back to the lumbal plates. He patted the strong, weight-carrying metal under Red Alert’s back kibble. The mech was on all four now, and although he was tense, he didn’t seem to be on the edge like when Inferno last tried to hold him. Good. The mech was settling in.  
Unexpectedly, while Inferno was gently scratching the lower part of his back, Red Alert bent his two arms and rested his elbows on the soil. Inferno suddenly found an open valve under his hand.   
To be honest, Inferno wasn’t an experienced mech. He read things, including some how-tos, because he knew that one day he might find himself in a situation like this. And Red Alert seemed to know what he wanted.   
So, bracing himself for whatever the white mech had in mind, Inferno summed up what he considered he had to do. Then, very carefully, he ran a finger around the valve’s edge. Red Alert’s purr told him that he was doing it right, so far. He repeated the movement with another finger.   
“You like it?”  
Being prepared before the big mech entered him?   
“Of course, yes!”  
The smaller one had doubts how far this will last, though. His inner feedback lines told him that his many-times wounded valve had only opened to a portion of its normal size. When he very much put his mind on it, Red Alert estimated that he could barely take in one single finger. This was not going to work, this was so not going to work....  
Inferno kept teasing the smaller mech’s valve, adamant on distracting him from whatever demons he was fighting. When he felt some humidity seeping from inside, he pressed a finger into the hole.   
Hmmm. Red Alert’s reaction said it all. With the finger still inside, Inferno turned his palm towards Red Alert’s right hip. Judging from the small moans that could only be pleasure, the smaller mech liked what he was doing.  
Good, because he wasn’t always good at doing something for the first try.   
“Tell me if I’m doing something wrong, though” he requested. “I don’t want to hurt you or something.”  
Hurt him? Hah. He would have been a few vorns late with that. Red Alert guessed he’d been through pretty much anything that a vile owner could do to him. What he was worried about was disappointing his new master. The pain was unavoidable, and he was ready to take it. For this master, he was willing to accept anything.   
Inferno ran his finger on the inner surface of the other mech’s valve, and was very glad that, because of the darkness and because of their angle, Red Alert couldn’t see his face. His horrified expression couldn’t have helped very much at the moment. He didn’t know what a normal valve felt like, but he could quite easily recognize a scar on any living surface. The increased lubrication only assured him of his diagnosis.  
He remembered what Red Alert told him about his latest master. He tried to calculate how long since that monster had last raped this delicate-looking city-mech, but if he joined the caravan in Tyrest, it must have been at least a quartex. Two, if he was given them in Tagan Capital.   
There were wounds, nanite-welds, coagulated energon and rough edges everywhere. The more he found, the less he wanted to know. Under his palm, however, Red Alert was purring and moaning and whispering one-word encouragements.   
The white mech shifted position so that he could press his butt more against Inferno’s hand on him. His sternal plate was on the ground, his face towards the dark valley, his vision in a colorful blur. Inferno’s touch felt so good, he could no longer care about what would happen next. Primus, he’d missed this kind of contact. No orders, no bondage (not even verbal), no restrictions. His master trusted him to do the right thing regardless of his programming faults. He seriously started to wonder if he was allowed to overload.   
“Continue please” he moaned when Inferno’s finger retreated from him. He felt the mech’s right thumb running round and round the edge of his valve, but he couldn’t see him counting the number of crusts on his lubricant-covered finger. He could, however, tell that his valve’s machinery worked freer than half a breem before, and he all but pushed into the touch when Inferno’s finger returned. With a very small click, a formerly blocked part of his valve panel retracted and gave slightly more way to the intruding finger. It was wonderful.  
Really, if his master hadn’t wanted him to overload, he would have said it by now. And who knew what made this mech aroused? Perhaps it was the sight of what he had done to others. It wasn’t a common occurrence, but Red Alert had seen that in his long carrier. He grinned to himself at the realization that he might had not understood his master because of the too many mechs in his life.   
But then another of Inferno’s fingers found its way into his valve, and his overload blinded his entire network.   
Everything was so perfect for half an astrosecond.  
Then Inferno bolted away from him, covering about five metrics distance with one panicked jump. The red mech ran twenty more metrics uphill before finally slowing down. He grabbed a solar panel’s sturdy pole, and clinged onto it like he was holding to it for his dear life.   
“Sorry, my friend” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
If it weren’t dark, they would have seen pure confusion on each other’s face.   
Red Alert sat down, letting his lubricant trickle on the ground. Did he fail to notice something? Did he do something wrong?  
“Sorry” Inferno repeated. “My fault. I should have thought about this.”  
“What?” Red Alert asked. What would have driven a mech, so calm and patient until now, to run away from his overloading slave? What made him.... was he actually climbing that pole!?  
Maybe he shouldn’t have judged anyone else’s behavior, but Inferno was most certainly overreacting something. Red Alert decided he’d better ask.   
“Huh. Later. Later, OK? I will tell.”  
Red Alert stood up, his blue optics now glowing in the dark. His master was struggling with himself to let go of the pole. He hurried there, and offered a hand to the obviously panicked mech.   
“So?”  
“Moment. Before I say anything, are you all right?”  
“Me? Am I the one who jumped up like a nickel flea?” Red Alert wanted to say more about his master’s presumed condition, but he filtered that out due to politeness. “What the frag happened to you?”  
“In short? I fell into the Rust Sea.”  
“Would you please elaborate?”  
Slowly, the tough large mech let go of the pole he was holding on to. Red Alert could feel him shivering, and since he wasn’t a sturdy farm-worker to be able to support another frame’s weight, he just held him while he sat down. Then he seated himself next to him, as close as he could, his arms on his master’s body in a reassuring hug. “What happened at the Rust Sea?”  
“It was.... it was my first monsoon time. Do you know what the ‘spark of the monsoon’ is? It’s a small dot in the all-covering rainclouds where the air stands still and the sun shines through. I went too far from the farm, and didn’t make it back before the ‘spark’ was over. The downpour washed me into a flooding river and it carried me away. Rust is only the result. The downcoming chemical with which the river had swollen, was pure poisoning acid. And I was in my first, immature frame.”  
“You survived.”  
“Yes. I think I did. After I was found, the good doctors had to wash me out or else the acid water would have damaged my internals. Part of this was.... washing me out.... there.”  
“They did a lavage on your valve. I guess it wasn’t something you liked?”  
“Getting a tube of solvent up in an immature valve? While the doctors told Infernalis that they couldn’t risk offlining me for the process, because they feared I wouldn’t online afterwards? Try and guess it.”  
“Factory seals?”   
“Eroded in the acid. I had acid rust about everywhere inside me. After one liquid, I was flushed out with another. So I.... I don’t really tolerate well anything in my valve, no matter how I know that, in theory, it is supposed to be there. I can’t exactly tell what made me react like this to your lubricant, I guess I got a little overprotective. I’m fine now. Seriously, I’m fine. You can let go of me.”  
Red Alert held him close, muttering something about two glitchheads making a pair. It was in his security programming that he could (and should) override his master’s commands if he considered that to be necessary.   
And now he decided that his master needed some comfort more than anything else.


	4. My valve / Your valve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dubcon scene anon asked for, part one. M-rate without future notice.

General Turntide walked through the incomplete Decepticon base, judging every corner, every loaded weapon with a slight disdain. The lower ranking Decepticons could only wonder, mutely, what he wished to see here. They have done their best, but obviously, Turntide had expected more.  
Finally, however, the purple and red officer reached the commander’s chamber and with a gruff greeting, entered the premise.   
“The list of the prisoners. Now.”  
He scrolled through the names, and finally something akin to satisfaction appeared in his oddly glowing red optics. He didn’t care about the third in command, nor did he bother with the yellow mech that had made many Decepticon enemies in his past.   
“This mechanism” he said, as if to himself “was my property at some point in his miserable worthless life.”  
\----------------------------  
The morning sun rose from behind the Stormy Range, and its first rays activated the adjusters of the huge solar plates.   
“Just listen. This is the music of activation.”  
The solar panels on a high cliff turned towards the rising sun with a low creak.   
“Watch this.”  
The shadow of the mountain moved on from the farm and gave place to the brilliant light that was giving energy in abundance. And wherever the brightness made contact with the formerly passive panels, the huge plates activated and turned on their poles to gather up as much of the life-giving radiation as they could.   
“As if the whole hillside was one giant being.”  
The sun rose, its rays conquered the fields, and darkness retreated to the foot of the mountain, to the caverns in the ground, to the slashed shadows of the moving large panels.   
“New day ahead.”  
Red Alert couldn’t understand how he could have spent the entire night out in the middle of an energon field, but somehow he felt freer with it. He too had turned his face to the rising sun, basking in the galore shine. Perhaps there was wealth in the cities, but at the moment he considered everybot out in the rural regions (including himself) to be richer than those who only measured their possessions in shanix and not in the light breeze of sundawn on their plates. The moment may pass, the memory will be his for an entire lifespan. Next to him, Inferno laid back on his back, and disconnected a tube from the nearest energifier. The red mech held out his palm between the small hole on the box and his own mouth, and drank the fresh sun-energon directly from its well.   
This was a little too much for Red Alert. How could have he stayed sprawled out while his new home was still in a mess and he still had to read the small motions his makeshift sensor recorded during the night? He should have also set the wires to the area they didn’t have time for. He estimated that about half of the farm was yet to be added to his primitive surveillance network. But he couldn’t do that without his master welding the holes, however, and the red mech was having breakfast in the most uncivilized way at the moment.   
Well. The permission to refuel was still valid, and he had been forced to take energon in lot more humiliating ways. So why would it hurt to drink some of the delicious, sun-made energon literally at hand?   
“Heavenly. I didn’t remember it was THIS nice” the white mech hummed. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t get himself a clean glass at the very first occasion, though.  
“Straight from the sun.”  
“You know what I’m wondering? Several of my former masters would pay a fortune for a cube of this. They don’t know what they’re missing.”  
“And I can’t imagine how anybot can consume a jellified mash that has gone through at least four machines before it got to their pretty tables. To me that doesn’t seem very.... edible.”  
“Refined energon has its own advantages” Red Alert pointed out. “It’s storable, for example.”   
“Yuck. I may seem to be a mech of no pretension, even austere, maybe, but having dust on my table doesn’t mean I’d tolerate having dust on my fuel.”   
Red Alert laughed out loud. It felt so good, to be able to lie kibble-to-kibble next to his master in the morning light, and laugh, finally, without any worries about either of their lives. He felt Inferno’s arm reaching under his head, and he leant closer, gently purring at the perfect comfort. It was such a rare moment that he could shoot down his threat-analyzing protocols. Next to him, Inferno was pleased that the formerly restless white mech was willing to power down this much in his company.   
After a while, however, Red Alert got fidgety again. The small, probably unintentional movement of his armor plate hinted that he wanted to get up. They still had half of an energon farm’s network to repair. Inferno remembered that the day before Bulkhead offered him to help with that. He might come soon after sunrise, and hopefully he’d also bring Quote along.  
“You say it’s time to get up? I happen to agree.”  
No, in fact, Red Alert would have quite happily remained in a lying position in Inferno’s company, but the mech was right. Work comes first.   
“I will get a second roll of wire if you tell me where I can find it.”  
“It’d be too heavy for you, city-mech. But if you started welding the tubes you think we can leave out of the sensornet, I’d be grateful.”  
Touching. How long since he’d been told this politely to go back to work and finish what he didn’t have time for on the shift before?  
Shift, what shift? Maybe he should leave schedules behind. Here time seemed to have a completely different nature. It wasn’t going to split up his tasks like it had in his entire life. There were tasks, some spoken, some not. He had to complete them, one after the other. He will find and arrest whoever damaged the tubes, we will clean at least the most important rooms in the mansion, and then, he can move on to the more painful task. Because, after last night’s confession, Red Alert could very easily rule out the ‘valve preference’ option. That one task will hurt, but the city-mech found that he didn’t really mind.  
He was ready with welding three entire lines in the parcel when his master called for him.   
“Red Alert, come up here please! I want you to meet Horsepower.”  
It had probably been the slave coding that prevented the oncoming security seizure. Because no matter how dangerous something is, as long as it belongs to his master and said master doesn’t consider the huge purple beast a threat, it wasn’t the security worker’s place to do anything about it.  
Horsepower was about twice as tall as Inferno was, his body length from his fangs to the end of his tail might have measured up to fifteen metrics. The morning sunrays were shining brightly on the talons of his four legs, and his red optics were glowing with curiosity as he examined the trembling city-mech.  
“Come closer, already!”  
Oh no. He’d better break down. He’d better glitch out, because if he had to end his functioning as a predacon’s breakfast, he’d better do unconsciously.   
Of course, he would be predacon fuel. Who would need a security specialist with this beast around? His master was very nice to provide him a last, happy day in his life before he would end it as a large purple creature’s meal. That was truly, truly kind.  
The beast approached. Either time has slowed down around Red Alert, or he was moving ponderously.   
From this close (the predacon was about thirty metrics from him) the security mech could see how malnourished the dragon-like creature was. His movement was noticably laggy, and his purple scal-plates displayed decoloration around the edges. That bad condition felt to be out of place here where the owner was clearly generous. But, well, with the slave traders’ caravan showing up so rarely, Inferno couldn’t get a delicacy like him for the beast every day.  
“Stop” he muttered. Or whispered. Or pleaded. He couldn’t go back to Cog’s safe little cargo hold, because Cog had sold him, but who else’s help could have Red Alert hoped for?   
“He can’t hear you” Inferno told calmly. “If you want him to stop, show him your two palms, fingers up, and he will understand.”  
Now that was quite an advice. To lift up his palms when a half-kiloton predacon was coming towards him. But he would try. He would try this silly thing if it gave him a one-millipercent chance of survival.  
Miraculously, it worked. The enormous beast stopped, watching his prey all the time.   
“All right, now let him go closer.”  
Red Alert lowered his hands. Where was the comfortable unconsciousness when he would have needed it?   
The beast smelled his left shoulder, and picked up his master’s scent. As if in need of an advice, the large predacon turned back to Inferno.   
“Just don’t try to rub his neck” the red farm-mech warned. “When he turns back to you, your fingers would get caught between his plates.”  
Okay, Red Alert thought. He wouldn’t rub the enormous beast’s neck. Really, he wouldn’t.  
Horsepower took one more step towards the newcomer on his territory, and examined him thoroughly.   
“Great, isn’t he? Try and guess his age.”  
Red Alert stood riveted. Well, predacons were known to play with their prey before tearing them apart, but Horsepower clearly wasn’t in playful mood. It occurred to the security expert that as long as he wasn’t trying to save himself, the beast might not consider him prey. That had to be his strategy. That had to be his key to survival. As for the age? Well. Beasts that were broken to harness (and, remembering the carriages in the garage, that had to be the story) remained operational for thousands of vorns. Ten thousands, if the owner was lucky.   
“So? I’ll give you a hint, he was retired at the age of thirty-one thousand” Inferno ‘helped’.  
What did it matter to Red Alert, when the beast was about to kill him?  
“Thirty-three?” he guessed.  
“Thirty-four thousand two hundred and thirty eight vorns” Inferno stated proudly. “Over three times as old as we together are. He’s not in a good shape anymore, though. Each season leaves its mark on him, and I’m training myself to let go.... but he’s still majestic, isn’t he?”  
“How long before he eats me up?” the trembling mech asked. The predacon’s face was half a metric away from Red Alert’s neck.  
“Come on, he used to ride sparklings on his back. What are you waiting for? Rub his forehead, that’s what he wants.”  
Slave programming took over. Red Alert would have preferred to be spasmodically lying on the ground in the blessed chaos of a processor-meltdown, but his well-learnt self-defense failed him.   
“Can you hear two grounders coming from north?” Those might have as well been his last words. Then he touched the giantic purple predacon’s headplate.  
The beast was looking straight at him with both red optics, each of those almost as large as the fragile city-mech’s palm. His tail was wobbling from one side to another, slowly, menacingly. After a while, he lifted his right forepaw, and placed it next to Red Alert’s left foot. His sharp talons almost punctured his ankle-wheel.  
“It seems he likes you” Inferno observed.  
“I guess his latest breakfast was more crunchy than I am” the city-mech replied.   
“Hah. Shock therapy?”  
That wasn’t his master’s voice!   
But it wasn’t an unfamiliar sound either. That was the giggling of a friend, a trusted mech he’d travelled with. Quote.  
“Oh look how Horsey is getting his forehead rubbed, I’m almost jealous!”  
And that was Bulkhead.  
Well, if his master invited them here, he perhaps didn’t do so to get them eaten as well.   
“Yes, good morning to the two of you, by the way” Inferno greeted his neighbors. “You should have seen them meet. Red Alert didn’t even finch.”  
“He was too scared to do that?” Quote joked. Not that he wasn’t correct about it.   
“Nah, I think he improved a lot since you’ve last seen him” Inferno replied. “We talked through half the night.... that included why I don’t have a washrack inside my house.”  
That little fault in architecture couldn’t have been that much important. Why was Inferno talking about it this seriously, then?   
It took Red Alert a moment or two, before it clicked. Inferno was referring to him falling into the Echobreak river in the middle of the monsoon.   
“Why don’t you have a....?” Quote started, but was interrupted by his green owner.   
“Mech, that’s serious.”  
Suddenly, the purple beast moved. Ignoring his to-be breakfast, Horsepower turned around and marched towards Bulkhead. He pressed his armored chin against the harverster’s wide chest panels, and happily growled when the mech started scratching his nearest audiosensor.   
“Hi, beauty. I was worried you wouldn’t even recognize me” the other mech said.   
“He can’t hear you anymore” Inferno pointed out. Now that Red Alert was paying attention to his owner instead of the beast that may not eat him up afterall, he could catch some irritation in his voice. “He didn’t hear you coming. What’s what happened.” Then, after a meaningful pause, he added in a lot softer tone, “Memory failures will come later.”  
Bulkhead was rubbing the enormous beast’s left shoulder, while his other hand was playing with Horsepower’s red forelock. The predacon was watching Quote, however. By the smell, he seemed to have already figured out that the blue transporter belonged to the green neighbor.   
“It must be hard to know you will lose him” Quote pointed out. “Quite an impressive beast.”  
“What’s the name of the frame type?” Red Alert quietly asked. He wanted to distract his master from what Quote had just brought up. Also, he finally remembered overhearing that Horsepower was suffering with cybercrosis.   
“He’s a dragonhorse” Inferno replied with pride. “I guess you didn’t meet many of them in those crammed hell-holes. A dragonhorse requires a lot of space, quality fuel, and a pit of physical exercise. I can tell you how drastically his condition dropped when I installed the drones to help him out with the harvest. He still tries to follow me when I’m spraying lotion on the solars, although he can no longer keep up with me.”  
The predacon covered the distance between himself and Quote, and after some very superficial scanning, he allowed the newling to rub his headplate.   
Red Alert had to reconsider his former opinion about Horsepower’s role in security. He was under the impression that nobot would get into the farm with a dragonhorse on the territory, no matter how old he is. But then, he had to admit that Horsepower was anything but a guard here – even a stranger could rub through his entire body, risking only his fingers getting caught between the scale-like metal plates of his neck.

 

.

The sunny daytimes provided for a regular and calculable lifestyle. Inferno had always onlined before sundawn, and watched the solar panels turning east in the morning – if there was a faultily angled sheet, this was the best time to spot it. If he’d found any, he usually repaired the kinked wires or stuck hydraulics in their place. Red Alert had admired how the large red farm-mech would climb the pole and then rest in the seemingly comfortable chromefrog position while only his soleal wheels being pressed against the metal were holding his weight. He never tried to do it after his master.   
He had successfully located the lair of the mysterious thief that caused so much damage to Inferno’s energon cables. It took him three orns before he could finally catch a glimpse of the silvery white turbofox, and one more to find its den. His master then told him to build out a corridor to the wilderness, so that the unwelcome beast would go hunting petrorabbits instead of wreaking havoc in the solar fields.   
“There are easier ways to get rid of it” Red Alert pointed out. Personally, he knew at least three noblemechs who would actually pay for the hunt. Not that the security specialist would have wanted them running around in the farm with loaded guns.   
“The unwritten law of the monsoon area strictly forbids unhoming any creature this close to the rainy season” Inferno replied immediately. “I have heard that, because of the fighting in and around Kaon, more and more turbofoxes are moving from the war zones to the peaceful polities. We will call for hunters when their number increases, but if one has just taken shelter before the storm, and the hunter misses the shot, the beast would remain alive for a while, up there, among the rocks, until it slowly starves to death without his accumulated reserves. Clear?”  
“Yes, Inferno. ‘The rule of the community always precedes anybot’s personal interest.’ I remember that” he reassured his master.  
Inferno smiled and patted him on the shoulder tyre. He didn’t even finch, which made the red mech rather proud.  
Red Alert’s programbugged mental status improved vastly after he came to Inferno’s possession. The overreaction-induced glitchout and the related paranoia were incurable, but the lack of any danger around him, the placid lifestyle, the kind and encouraging master, the fresh air, the unlimited access to quality fuel, and (most importantly) being useful in this new environment had resulted in a happy, self-assured mech who rarely broke down once in five or six orns.   
Inferno had mostly asked for his help with the drones and the more complicated repairs. The security mech had to learn to pilot the automatized carriages, built fences to keep the turbofox away from the production cables, tested the sinker mechanism that could take entire buildings under ground level, operated the energon compressor, and checked the rustproof shackles that were meant to tie down the waterproof sheets in the oncoming thunderstorms. Red Alert had never experienced really bad weather, as the wealthy cities he used to live in were not in the storm-affected area. He was aware that an acid storm was dangerous, but his programming only forced him to search for and prevent threats presented by another sentient being. A naturally occurring phenomenon did not seem to bother him nearly as much as it concerned the red farm owner.  
He worked, he lived, he improved. In his free time, he cleaned up the entire mansion, washed the galoots on the garage shelves, and when he was done with that, he started covering the pink lines in the fields so that they wouldn’t tempt any new turbofoxes to the farm.   
After he hadn’t had a crashdown for eight orns in a row, Inferno considered it was time for him to leave the farm and get familiar with the rest of his surroundings. They climbed Stormy Range up to Cliffjumper’s crystal-growing farm, they visited Bulkhead and Quote. They wandered up to the Nobot’s Peak, from where they could see the shiny structures of Praxus and they could even make out the tallest towers of Vos on the other side of the Rust Sea. When Red Alert insisted, Inferno showed him where the acid flood had once washed him into the Echobreak river, and they rolled along the river to the seashore.  
“How deep is it here?” Red Alert asked. “It doesn’t look too bad. Granted, it might have been deep for a sparkling.”  
“It’s not the depth, rather, the waves” Inferno replied. “Be glad you didn’t have to see them. They washed Horsepower off his feet in the shallow water.”  
Then it clicked.  
“Did he find and rescue you?”  
“Of course, he did. I would be a small pile of rust without him by now.”  
Inferno stepped into the acid water, it’d barely reached up to his feet wheels’ suspension. Very cautiously, he made two more steps forward. “I’m trying to walk further and further each time I go in there” he explained.   
Well, if he was doing this since his early sparklinghood, he didn’t really make much of a success. But at least he tried.   
Red Alert sat on a stone, and stared into the distance. He was trying to guess Horsepower’s place in his master’s life. Certainly his usefulness was over, Inferno himself had stated that he had retired over three thousand vorns ago. He also had cybercrosis – an incurable disease, and scientists argued whether it was contagious. So why was Inferno keeping him? A mechanism of Horsepower’s size must take up a lot of fuel, and the farm-mech couldn’t even afford losing energon to a turbofox’s bites. Perhaps it was for the emotional bond they shared? Likely.   
Red Alert counted how many times he’d protected the lives of his owners. Even the most worthless one’s, he had saved. Despite he hated that mechanism down to his last screw, he couldn’t bring himself to wish for the mech’s demise, let alone, allow the assassins to succeed. That owner had made many enemies, then bought every guard he could find. After two vorns of constant torture and humiliation, he, the silly glitchhead had still managed to fight the sedatives in his fuel long enough to reactivate the force field in the master’s recharge room. Most of the other mechs he had for security had perished in the explosion. After that, when his master asked him what he wished for, he told him that he wanted to be given back to any of his former owners. The master laughed at him and told him that none of those mechs had need for a glitchpile like him, and sold him to the first trader that showed up. He remembered how loudly the master laughed when Cog offered five thousand shanix for him.   
On the other hand, out of forty-eight former owners (not counting the different traders of course), twenty-one had been killed when he was no longer responsible for them, ten of these within a vorn after they got rid of him. Eight more died in various accidents, and two others were missing.   
“Hey, Red Alert, you’re so lost in your thoughts.” Somehow the mech had ventured one more step forward in the wheel-deep water.  
The security expert looked up at his master. His programming demanded that he kept his owner safe and satisfied. Both seemed easy tasks, in this peaceful environment, and....  
“Master! Oxide sharks!”  
Inferno was wise enough to get out from the seawater and only look around afterwards.  
“Where? They are uncommon here but I have seen about four or five myself in my life.”  
“There!” the mech pointed at the horizon. “Right behind that dark tower!”  
Inferno relaxed. “Red Alert, please. The Traders’ Signalhouse is eight hundred megamiles from here.”  
“I’d rather not lose you to oxide sharks, be they close or away.”  
“Thank you. You have very good optics, by the way.”  
Red Alert dropped his head. “I know” he murmured.  
“What is it?”  
Should he say it? Well, yes, since his master had asked.  
“My latest owner sold me for the worth of my salvageable parts.”  
Inferno couldn’t relate to Red Alert’s problem. He’d known what his crops were worth, he’d known how much Cliffjumper paid when he bought Mouser’s crystal field, he’d known what medical repairs cost. But he couldn’t put numbers and a beating spark together, and Red Alert was Red Alert for him, not the few thousand shanix he’d invested, nor the many megamile cables that were now safe from the turbofox, thanks to him.   
“I don’t know what to say” he finally admitted. “But if that makes you feel better, I promise you that I will only let you go if you ask me to, under circumstances of your preference.”  
“What if I told you to contact the security service of Praxus? They would buy me back for at least five hundred thousand shanix. You will have gained four hundred ninety thousand, and you need that money.”  
Inferno looked into those pure blue optics. “Do you want me to do that?”  
“Don’t you want five hundred, as you call them, barkers? I know they would buy me back.”  
“What would happen to you, then? You’d go back to the big city, a Tri-Peninsular Torus State of that, and what next? You’d waltz into the office that you’d find the way you’d left?”  
Well, no. Not quite. Not likely. They would take him back, for half the money they’d once sold him for, because his expertise cost exactly that much. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be made fun of as the local paranoid.   
Red Alert’s hesitation was a clear answer for Inferno.  
“OK, I get it. I hope you’re not thinking about me selling you just for the profit, but if you feel like contacting your former colleagues, we can set up the long-distance communicator.”   
“Would you?” Red Alert stared. “Would you allow me to call Praxus?” Would he be allowed to talk with his long lost friends?  
“The Stormy Range will echo and jam the signal, and we can only keep the antenna out in good weather or else it erodes in a matter of kliks. Wait, you thought I don’t even have a communicator, right?”  
“Well.... yes.”

.

Cliffjumper, who was an unbending and clamorous mech, had a very hard time with the equally strong-willed Best. Not once had they complained that the other was driving them crazy, regardless of their assumed good intentions and will to cooperate. The other inhabitants of Stormy Range had shared the general opinion that the two would not get bored when the rainfall would lock them together inside, but some had voiced their concern that they would both survive it.   
Bulkhead and Quote had had an awful lot of work to catch up with, as the energon-trading companies’ transports never bothered to climb the Stormy Range as far as Bulkhead’s farm. The roads were too crooked and the hillside was too steep for any secure ways of lowering raw energon, and Bulkhead had a large stock that had to be moved. When he lamented about his former workers and concluded that he should have bought an own transport much sooner, Quote had calmly pointed out that it wouldn’t have been him, and that sometimes a real bargain is worth the wait.   
Sideswipe, who had mostly bought Ever so that the three-split brothers would remain together, had grown very fond of the light blue mech. They had travelled around the entire Range, or at least drove to New Argent together every orn after their work was done. If anybot needed something from Tyrest or Tagan Capital, it was the two of them who’d done the shopping, and in exchange they didn’t accept more than a good chat and two cubes of highgrade.  
The young pleasure-bot, Shine, had turned GranMac’s little inn to the center of New Argent’s social life. He had been eager to please anybot by his programming, and this unconditional kindness had helped him get along with the locals very fast. Soon, whenever there was a conflict between two villagers, their neighbors called for Shine and trusted his skills with settling down the conflict. Keeping up the good morale of the entire settlement became the white and chrome mech’s primary function, with running the Death Row as the second. His original task, that of a pleasure-mech, had only been one of his extras. But he would do anything, literally anything, just to be the center of attention. GranMac was sure he’d bring back his investment cost in the first vorn of his functioning.

.

Red Alert put down the camera lens he had been polishing, and turned his audiosensors to maximum sensitivity. He had picked up the tone of the wind, and identified it as the sound that made his master grimace and whisper ‘I don’t like this at all’. Originally, he had been directed to this shed to pick up the parts of the long-range communicator, but that could wait. The weather cameras, however, were to be placed out on the mountain on the day after.  
Inferno explained to him that it was unusual to get rain this early, but he had seen worse weather in his existence and the forecast predicted a long and heavy monsoon. And he had found the whistle of the wind upsetting. Red Alert wondered if his master was just seeing things, because of his well-known dislike for the acid rain, but he had assisted him in the preparation no matter how everybot in New Argent told them that they were being overly cautious. Cliffjumper said that he had the antler-shaped energon crystals still out there, and didn’t even consider harvesting them, as the best taste (and highest price) can be achieved only if the glowing purple formations are left in their position for a few weeks after the clouds covered the sky and the growth period was over. Red Alert was fascinated with the sight of the growing antler-crystals he had formerly only seen as high-end delicacy. Even he had considered Inferno to be a little over-cautious, but he didn’t feel like speaking up when he had the same urge to be on the safe side whenever something could have gone wrong. Inferno said that this might be the effect of the paranoid mechanism in his life, but carrying all the cover sheets out to the fields wouldn’t hurt.  
So Red Alert was cleaning the lens of the camera that would be set to monitor the clouds above the Rust Sea. When the grey mess would reach the Traders’ Signalhouse, the cam would give off a warning signal to the farmers who would still have plenty time to remove the sunray-collecting lenses from the bases of the crystals, the sensitive energon-processing machines from the lines, and those who had growing crystals would also be able to place transparent lids on them.   
“Why not a force field?” Red Alert then asked.  
“I can only guess, as I have never worked with crystals. It might disrupt the formation, or leave an aftertaste. It may not be effective enough in a downpour. It certainly wouldn’t worth the effort and the lost energy throughout the whole season. Or it might have a bad effect on the seeds for the next growth period. I don’t know.”  
Red Alert put the camera back together, and went to the other shed to get the batteries. It wasn’t like he couldn’t have found a battery here if he had searched long enough, but it felt good to spin his transformation cog after having worked in robot mode for the entire night.   
Something didn’t feel right.  
He scanned for his master’s energy signature on reflex. He was recharging in the mansion, and there was no detectable change around him.   
The wind was blowing, loud, and on the frequency Inferno didn’t like.   
With everything being of metal around him, Red Alert didn’t have a reliable tool to determine the strength and direction of the wind. They had a device for that, but it was not yet connected to the monitoring network he was building out in his new home, and it was too dark to see its readings.  
Dark.  
That’s it, it was much darker than what Red Alert was used to. As he looked around, he could also tell why.  
He only hesitated an astrosecond before he decided to wake his master. It could have been a false alarm, but with their position reversed, he would have also preferred to be waken. He rolled straight into the farm-owner’s room.  
“Inferno, reboot. I can’t see Tagan.”  
“We are in Tagan” the red mech muttered back.   
“I can’t see the lights of Tagan Capital” Red Alert specified.   
For the barely online farm-mech, it took about two astroseconds to process his security specialist’s words. Then he jumped up from his berth, transformed mid-air, and rushed to see it with his own optics.  
The lights of Tagan Capital were blocked by a thick layer of clouds. The wind sang menacingly about the oncoming acid monsoon.   
“Get to the operating shed!” he instructed. “Activate the sinkers in all the fields!” At the same time, he was already airing warning messages to his neighbors, to his friends, to New Argent’s communal frequency, and also to Shine because he knew the mech would transmit it to everybot sooner than it would have normally been possible. “When you are done with that, come down and collect the energifiers. No, wait, start with those closest to you, save as many as you can!”  
Red Alert could still see nothing dangerous, only the harsh change in the weather. The only thing that worried him was his master’s reaction, but that was only an answer to the changing weather and didn’t indicate any danger that would come to either of them. Later the white city-mech was unspeakably grateful that his brain modules had not failed him and he hadn’t cascaded into a full breakdown right then.   
The solar panels had straightened to a horizontal position and their rows started sinking one after the other. The thick poles disappeared into the ground, the great squares flattened themselves onto the soil. Inferno was already out of sight.  
Red Alert transformed back to robot mode and hurried to the nearest row to disconnect the energifier. He didn’t have much of a subspace capacity, but it was enough for a few of these boxes. He rushed to the next row, and then the next. He had subspaced four energifiers, grabbed two more into his hands, and went back to the shed. He packed out in a hassle, and put his weapons on the nearest shelf. Without them, he would have subspace capacity for two more boxes.  
As he was working, he caught sight of his master pulling the cover sheets over the sank panels. Now he understood why Inferno told him to make sure the shackles had been in place at the ends of the rows. The wind was pulling on the sheets, and if they hadn’t been fastened to the small rings in the ground, they would have been waving like flags.  
Red Alert picked up receiving signals from the other farmers. He could tell his master replied on Cliffjumper’s frequency, telling him that he had not wished to be right. Immediately afterwards he replied on Bulkhead’s frequency that ‘He’s taking it better than I expected.’ Red Alert wondered what his master had been replying to, but there was no time for a chat. He subspaced seven energifiers, transformed to car mode, and rolled uphill to the sheds. He unloaded his cargo and turned to get the next seven boxes.  
He was halfway loaded when he had spotted the monster. It was dark with only the red optics glowing menacingly, and the wind howled through his panels, causing a frightening sound. The long due scare-out cascaded into a full processor shutdown. Red Alert dropped the energifier he was about to subspace, and his limbs soon tangled into each other in an uncontrolled seizure. The last sound he remembered was Inferno saying, “No, not now, we don’t have time!” while the enormous dark beast seized him by the chest panel.  
When he rebooted, he had finally recognized Horsepower. He turned onto his abdominal panels and gathered his limbs under himself. Both his master and the beast had been pulling out large sheets across the solar fields, and if it hadn’t been for their weight, the wind would have lifted them up by the textiles.  
“Stand up!” his master ordered. “Get the energifiers, it’s getting worse by every breem!”  
He obeyed. His programming forced him to obey, and he had done so, regardless of the confusion in his functional processors. His orders forced him to keep going.  
The first drops of acid rain didn’t even register. His engines had been heated with the high speed and the constant transformation, and he had been rolling uphill at the time. He put down his cargo in the shed, and went to get the next seven. By the time he returned with them, the heavy rain was already coming down.  
“Is your force field strong enough?”   
Red Alert could not locate his master with the rain jamming all his sensors, so he had just shouted into the downpour a self-assured yes. Inferno’s voice, perhaps from mere metrics away from him, told him to take shelter if the rain would get too much.  
Red Alert was persistent. He had seen his share of acid attacks and he had once had to cross a large lake of a similar mass on a destabilized mining asteroid, so a pre-shedule rain was not going to stop him. His joints had hurt by the time he was doing his last round, and he could tell that the energifiers in his subspace had been damaged by the acid to some degree, but as long as there wasn’t any energy in them, they were certainly not going to explode. He had no idea how long it would take to repair them, but he guessed there would be more than enough time.  
“You ready?” Either he was seeing a dark stone, or his master was standing in front of him.   
“One more turn” he replied.  
“Good. I will go and help Bulkhead.”  
“See you there!”  
If that had been his master, he had smiled. Or so Red Alert imagined.  
Bulkhead’s farm was mostly above Inferno’s, and the acid rainwater was flowing from that direction. Red Alert had never had to drive this steep with acid water coming down against him, he wasn’t exactly sure if he would manage. He could have been simply flushed off the hillside, and his master wouldn’t have even had the faintest idea where to search for him.   
At least he had escaped a second glitchout when he identified Horsepower just in time. The large predacon stepped behind him, and pushed him upwards, slowly and laboriously, but with eventual success. He tried to thank the beast, but in the whistling wing he couldn’t have been heard even if the dragonhorse hadn’t been deaf.  
At least the farm itself was a lot more horizontal than Inferno’s. He could see Quote dragging cover sheets out to the field which Inferno had been pulling into position, while Bulkhead was collecting the energifiers. Red Alert rolled there and followed the green mechanism with some boxes he’d picked up on his way. Bulkhead showed him where to put down the energifiers, and hurried away to help with the large sheets.   
When the last energifier was safe, he tried to join those three struggling with the covers, but with his delicate frame, he couldn’t have been of much use with that. Instead, his master called him aside so close that they could actually hear each other, asked if his force field was still able to deal with the rain, and after a hesitant yes, Inferno sent him on to help Sideswipe.   
“Yes, Inferno.”  
“We will move on to Cliffjumper, his farm is the most exposed, Sides’s fields are relatively safe. If the weather doesn’t allow you to safely return to the mansion, then stay with Sideswipe. Better that than losing you. Your tyres are not for this level rain.”  
Oh, he had discovered that.  
“And don’t take more of the acid than what your force field can handle!”  
With that, they parted ways.  
When he arrived, the light blue (in this weather: invisibly dark) Ever had been literally dragging Sideswipe away from the glowing pink energon-antlers.   
“Those are nothing better than fancy drone fuel, after this weather!” he reasoned.   
“They cost fifty shanix each!” the farmer replied.  
“No they don’t! We have to save the rest of the property!.... Oh, hi, Red.”  
“Good evening. You are really arguing as if you were Cliffie and Best” Red Alert pointed out. “Inferno sent me to see if I can be of any help.”  
“Can you drive drones?” Sideswipe asked.  
“Yes, I can!”   
“Park them into the garages over there, the harvesting pot goes into the largest one, I don’t care where you put down the rest, but please hurry!”  
Red Alert looked around to find the drones, and he had only succeeded because he had a built-in device that could pick out large messes of metal even when every other sensor was jammed. This was quite the situation when he was glad he had it.   
The drone’s control panels had been soaked and kept malfunctioning, so the task took three or four times longer than how fast he could have normally parked it. Then he transformed and rolled to get the second one. Then the third.  
With each drone, Red Alert could feel his force field giving out more and more often.   
“Three combined harvester drones are parked, I can’t find the pot” he reported to Sideswipe.   
The red mechanism was about his size, and he was surprisingly strong for that. He was carrying a load of lids, in the vain hopes of protecting the crystals from the rain. Red Alert knew that the delicacy was worth the money only as long as it was edible, and he guessed that the red farm owner was aware of this fact too.   
“It’s parked on that slight curve!” Sideswipe indicated. Then he considered the rain and the chances of Red Alert not finding it if it had been still there. “Or the rain washed it off. It might be already in the Echobreak river. Don’t risk your life to get it!”  
“Can I help with anything else?”  
Sideswipe thought about it for a moment.  
“No, not now. Do you think you can get home safely? It’s slippery down there.”  
His force field was still keeping most of the acid away from his white torso, but the more drops penetrated his shield, the harder it was for him to keep it up. He would need maintenance. He would need a whole flask of those lotions Inferno was keeping in the cupboard.  
“I will manage.”  
“Take care, and thank Inferno for me!”

.

In fact, Red Alert considered it a miracle that he’d arrived home at all. He stood under the clean buffer’s stream in the washrack, and offlined his force field. He had to get most of the acid off his chassis before it would eat away his metal. Then he switched the force field back to maximum capacity for that short time till he got back to the mansion. He rubbed himself with the first textile that came to his hand, then dampened another one with a slightly alcalic lotion, and scrubbed away the last drops of the acid.  
He wondered where his master might have been. He was certain that the mech could take care of himself, but it still felt bad that he was safe and clean and sitting in the dry room while Inferno was still out there in the storm. He was very much relieved when he finally picked up the familiar energy signature. Inferno went the same way as he had a few breems before: washrack, textile board, dampener, and finally collapsing on the nearest chair.  
“Cliff lost about half of his crops” he said. “I don’t know how many of his crystal seeds will be salvageable. Best has really lived up to his name, though. If Cliffie doesn’t go bankrupt, and I guess he won’t, he has that to thank Best.”  
“Talking of thanks, Sideswipe thanks you.”  
“And I thank you, city-mech. If you hadn’t waken me, we all would have lost pretty much everything. I heard the wind threatening us, but you were the only one paying attention.”  
“You were the precautious one, Inferno. I have seen Bulkhead hadn’t even packed out those blankets in advance.”  
“Yes, that was giddy of him” the red mechanism sighed. He didn’t feel like moving after such hassle.   
“What now, master?”  
Inferno blinked at him. He didn’t like being addressed like that, but it had happened so rarely, and only when Red Alert wasn’t paying attention. He decided, again, not to comment on that.  
“Nothing” he simply said. “We don’t do anything but wait. It will be two or three quartexes before we get to move out of the house again, except for some scouting I won’t let you to do.”  
Red Alert looked out through the window, and didn’t ask why his master wasn’t going to let him out on a patrol. And, according to his faint knowledge of monsoon weather, this horrible rain outside was just the beginning of what was about to come.  
They didn’t get to see anything but each other for four orns and a half.   
The sheds and the garages had been sank below ground level, so that the acid rain would flow above their roofs. Inferno showed Red Alert around the hidden maze of old leaky barrels and rusty knick-knacks, and couldn’t help pointing out that the washrack was now practically inside the house.   
“Is this what you can’t function without, city-mech?”  
Well, yes. The washrack was giving him kinky ideas. Then he remembered that Inferno didn’t like liquids in general, so he dropped the idea.  
“Where’s Horsepower in this weather?” he asked instead.  
“Enjoying the rain, I guess. He has some rare superheavymetal in his plates that make his frame perfectly resistant to acid. Once I had a medico here who wrote his thesis about Horsepower. He stayed for almost a whole summer. As far as I know, he stayed at the Protihex Medical Mechanics University after graduating.”  
“What’s his designation?” Red Alert inquired. They had little more to do than just stare out of the few windows still above the ground, and if his master didn’t feel like answering, he could have told him to shut up.  
“Wait a nanosec. Red frame, yellow optics....Something with R....”  
“Rossum?”   
“Yes, do you know him?”  
“Everybot on Cybertron knows him, he’s one of the most famed scientists.”   
“Does he still have that rather odd sense of humor?”  
“It depends on what you call an odd sense. He didn’t have much sense of safety, as far as I remember, he almost got hit by my master’s arm-built blaster in that half breem I’ve seen him in person. He is a living legend, but a little....”  
“.... careless? You should have seen him taking samples from Horsey’s plates. He babbled something that Horsepower’s spark is keeping ununtrium stable in his frame and he needed to compare the scales on his tail and above his spark casing. Those are about the two places on a dragonhorse you don’t want to hold for long.”  
“And?”  
“Horsey slapped him on the face with his tail a few times, as posing for long isn’t really his kind of thing. For the spark cover sampling, Rossum was feeding him with energon goodies with his other hand.”  
Red Alert nodded. He really didn’t have a high opinion about the famous scientist’s survival instincts.  
“Can you guess how many predacons would have gently allowed a stranger to fumble with their spark-covering plates?”  
“No. Can you?”  
“I guess zero.”  
Inferno laughed. “Possibly. Horsepower is exceptionally benevolent. By the way, Rossum told me he would gratefully return the favor one day. If he’s that much of a celebrity, as you’re saying, well, that is something, am I correct?”  
Red Alert couldn’t but agree.  
Although it seemed impossible, the rainfall increased. From the security mech’s room upstairs, they could see the massive clouds cumulating above the Rust Sea, and they sat by that window for joors when they had nothing else to do. Inferno went out on patrol every orn, because if there was any sparked creature out there, it couldn’t have survived unless found. This was how he’d picked up the dying petrorabbit that had been washed out of its den, but despite their best efforts, the little pest passed away a few breems afterwards.   
One night (or was it daytime? In the heavy rain, it didn’t really matter) Red Alert suggested that Inferno learned some self-defense from him. There was obviously no need for such skill in the mountains, but they had plenty time, and the underground hall between the sank sheds provided ample space for sparring. They piled the barrels and rusting drones and some old personal belongings aside, and Inferno started by following Red Alert’s instructions on how to stand, where to aim a punch, and to be careful never to let the opponent puncture any of his wheels. Soon he would have been able to beat his instructor to the ground, the only thing that actually prevented him from doing so was both of them giggling so hard at each other. As a sign of surrender, Red Alert finally went limp in Inferno’s grip, and muttered “I’m all yours now, I suppose.” Then he kicked his beloved master in the wheel above his left hip.   
“Ah, my suspension!” the larger red robot screamed theatrically, and collapsed on his small torturer.   
“Master, please, get off me.”  
“You deserve to be pinned down” Inferno decided, and rubbed his helm against Red Alert’s. “And I think I told you to call me by my designation.”  
“Yes, you did, master.” And, since Inferno above him was distracted, Red Alert took his chance and kicked into his other abdominal wheel, just for the symmetry. Then he writhed hopelessly as his master crouched onto his chest panel in pretended agony. “That’s what you get if you don’t pay attention.”  
The other day, Red Alert told his master to put the stasis cuff on him. Then he acted as if he were cooperative up till the very last moment, when he’d grabbed the cuff in his master’s hand and after few very fast movements, he left Inferno in the sedative ties.   
“How did you do this?”  
“I will show you slowed down.”  
After very few astroseconds, the red farm-mech demanded to be shown the same trick even slower. For the fourth try, Inferno actually managed to evade being cuffed by his own property, and by the end of the orn, he was able to pull the same trick on Red Alert. Then his teacher moved on to the more challenging, and sometimes life-saving trick: how to get an active stasis cuff off his wrists.   
“It depends on the type and quality of the cuffs, but there is no unremovable version” Red Alert explained. “If you’re looking to buy one that truly lasts, check how tight the batteries are fixed into the joint. This one here is only good for training purposes.”  
“Aham. And how do I make sure the opponent doesn’t escape?”  
“You stop in every fourhundred astrosecs and fasten the belts again.”  
“I should have thought about that. Thank you.”  
“You’re welcome.” With that, Red Alert dropped the cuffs to the ground, and offered a competition to try and tie up each other. The one who remains free, wins.  
Inferno made a wide gesture. “Your move, city-mech.”  
The result, one that left Red Alert satisfied and content, had been a very clear draw. They have properly tied each other’s left wrists together. Of course, the stasis-lock didn’t work this way.   
“All right, that was it for now” Inferno finally decided. “Thank you, Red Alert. You are a treasure.”  
“May you never need what I taught you” was the reply.   
Then the former opponents walked together to the energon-tap in the mansion, and peacefully consumed their fuel together. The heavy rainfall didn’t cease for an astrosecond outside.  
After their dinner, Red Alert apologetically offered to help clean out the scratches he left on his master, and Inferno, just as apologetically, helped him straighten back his dented panels.   
“There, you’re almost as good as new, city-mech.” Red Alert did a whole-frame checkup, and decided that his master was correct. He was almost as good.  
“Does your damage report state otherwise?”  
“No, it doesn’t. Quite not. I just checked some of my older wounds.”  
“And you’re healing well, I’m glad to hear that.”  
“Yes, Inferno. My valve is back to fully operational.”  
The red farm-mech stared at him with sheer confusion. “And? I hope you didn’t mean you wanted me to rupture what has just healed. Maybe that’s what your older masters would have done. Personally, I very much don’t want to hurt you.”  
“You won’t” Red Alert argued. “I am adaptive.” Well, that wouldn’t mean it wouldn’t be painful, but the city-mech would have been willing to endure more than that for Inferno.  
The farm-mech placed a gentle hand on the white shoulder.   
“You are my property, right?”  
“Right.”  
“That means, your valve is also my property. Correct?”  
“Yes, Inferno.”  
“So if I decide I don’t want to give you wounds like the ones I found last time, I have the right to leave you alone.”  
Trap.  
“You won’t hurt me, I’m telling you. Especially if....”  
“Yes?”  
Red Alert was confused. Should he actually give his master instructions in the berth? Teaching him self-defense was one thing. He was a security expert, and had the right to do anything that would help his owner’s survival in any unexpected situations. Berthing was a completely different topic. In that, he shouldn’t have been more than an enduring toy.  
“I would prefer if I were backwards. Because of the inner structure of my back kibble, I have always been able to take a spike better from the back.”  
Inferno caressed his face. He could tell that the pretty mech was ashamed of his request. He had only spoken up because he had trusted his master to listen.   
“You are a delicate little mech, and I don’t want to do anything bad to you as long as I can help it. I don’t know what kind of programming is forcing you to offer yourself like that, but I am certainly not affected by it. I always thought a valve-spike interface is something deep and may I say spiritual, a connection that precedes and eventually sets place to spark-merging. Since I first onlined, I never even considered taking another mech just for my share of fun in it. Maybe I’ve missed out something, maybe I have missed out much, but I kept to this standard. I’d rather die a virgin than berth with someone I don’t love. Now here are you. You’re a beautiful city-mech, and I’m grateful for your company, for your advice, for the way you laugh, pit, I’m even grateful for your crash-downs because otherwise I wouldn’t have bought you from the traders. But. Look at me. I’m a farm-mech, an odd-one-out in your line of masters, and I know and accept that you don’t want to stay with me on the long run. You belong to the cities. You belong to Praxus. You belong to civilization, and that is where you will one day return to. I’m aware that I’m important to you, that I’m a turning point in your life, and I’m proud to be that. But all this doesn’t mean I have the right to make use of your defenselessness.”  
“Master, I....”  
“No. Not ‘master’. Never again.”  
“Inferno....”  
“Yes?”  
“Do I have no chance with you?” If that were the case, he was sure Inferno would have told him to never bring up the subject again, but an honest answer could always be one step forward.  
The red farm-mech paused for a moment before he replied.  
“You want this, or you need this?”  
“Both.”  
“You leave me no choice.”  
With that, Inferno grabbed Red Alert by the waist, and lifted him like an oversized tool to be carried from point A to point B. In this case, point B was a spot upstairs in Red Alert’s room, one step away from the berth.  
“So. Despite my silly belief in a Certain Special Somebot, who may never come to this peaceful little settlement, you still want to be my first?”  
“Someone has to” Red Alert assured him.   
“I may seem otherwise, but I’m grateful. Now, how exactly do you consider ‘backwards’?”  
Primus, was he going to give instructions again? But well, either that or Inferno will still be just as inexperienced when the rain finally stops.  
Speechlessly, the smaller mech pulled his master to the berth, and started caressing him, with both hands and with his helm too. There was no telling how sensitive the tiny sensors in his helm were, and pressing those against the red frame was already worth the oncoming pain. His hands were rubbing the stronger mech’s center, his large abdominal glass, his wide and beautiful hip panel. Red Alert knelt by the berth, and ran a tentative glossa above the spike cover.   
Meanwhile, Inferno was also caressing him. His helm, his back kibble, his shoulder-wheels, pretty much everything the mech could reach while he was lying on the berth and Red Alert was kneeling next to it. The smaller one purred, just like on that first night, when they had been sitting together on the hillside (a dry hillside, what a difference!) and he was so touch-starved that Inferno could overload him with just one hand and some sparkfelt tenderness.   
Slowly and very patiently he coaxed the spike out. Mostly, he used his glossa and two hands for that, but then he also rubbed his face against it. He licked it up from its basis to the tip and back. At this point, his hands were massaging the hip joints and the short, but strong and somehow very arousing red thighs. He felt his master’s hands on his own helm, and on the inner side of his back kibble. Instinctively, he increased the sensitivity of that area. Primus, this was already worth it. He rubbed his face against the now standing spike, and moaned loud when his master moved his hands under his shoulder wheels.   
So. Good.  
He moved his hands on to the master’s knees and shins, beckoning red metal under his palms.   
The only thing Red Alert didn’t like about this was how large Inferno’s spike eventually turned out to be. This will test his coping ability and his self-control, he knew. He decided not to worry about what he was unable to change. At least he won’t have to see the spike entering him, and it was a little bit easier to ignore something out of his sight.   
Still kneeling, he pressed his entire upper body against Inferno’s hip region, with his left hand holding the spike. He massaged out a satisfied moan of his owner, and he had felt the first tiny drops of transfluid on his finger. He didn’t dare to look.  
Finally, he slid onto Inferno’s frame, with his two shins on the master’s either side and his knees against the abdominal wheels. He tried to focus on how comfortable it was to rest his legs against those very wheels he’d kicked into about four or five breems before. The word ‘ironic’ also applied.  
Now no looking down, Red Alert reminded himself. He will feel what and when is happening, that will be enough. That will be more than enough.  
He lowered his head, offlined his optics. He rested both hands on Inferno’s sturdy shins, and leant forward. He could feel the tip of the spike against his abdominal plate, and according to the sounds and to the movements his limbs had picked up, Inferno was feeling this too. He pulled his right knee closer to himself. Then the left. He grabbed Inferno’s ankles, and pressed his own legs a little bit closer to each other. This way he could not only palpate his master’s every movement, he would later also keep up with the rhythm of his waist. He braced himself for whatever pain was about to come, and lowered his own waist panel to where Inferno’s spike had to be. He opened his valve cover, and let the first section of the spike enter him.  
Inferno knew the theory behind what was happening, he knew what his frame was doing, and he hoped that his body’s programming and Red Alert’s experience will help everything go the way they should. His hip arched to help his spike into Red Alert, whose hip, in reaction, moved upwards so that it would return to its position later. The friction and pressure made him want more and more, and his inner programming demanded that he moved his hip along with Red Alert’s but with larger and larger moves, until his spike would be perfectly inside the pretty black panel. His arousal started to overwrite his innate will of taking care of the mech who depended on him. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to hold back if Red Alert had suddenly decided he had enough. He slid one hand on Red Alert’s back, while with the other he was teasing the inner wires of the white, black and red knee joint.   
Red Alert grit his dental plates and waited for the size-adapting hardware to finally come to the end of its capacity. So far, so good, but it was pure physics that he won’t be able to take in the whole length of that huge spike. He was very glad that Inferno didn’t see his face right now. One more thrust, one more.... that hand on his back didn’t help a bit, although it was much better than the impersonal passivity of some of his past owners.   
Personal, yes, that was his word. This bond he shared with Inferno was exclusive for both parties. Inferno didn’t have anyone else in his life, and Red Alert guessed he was somehow jealous of those former owners. Inferno won’t pass him on to a trader after growing bored with his glitches. He won’t throw him away after making use of his knowledge. They were going to remain each other’s.   
It was good right now. Goooood. He was able to adapt, thanks to the long wait during which his wounds had healed. With each thrust, he could take in more and more. And when the small feedback wire finally told him that he was at the end of his capacity, he leant forward on Inferno’s legs, and pressed his (now full) hip panel against those short thighs, those charming red knee panels. He straightened both legs, pushing them against Inferno’s two upmost wheels. Inferno reacted with a loud moan, and a circuit-burning overload. Red Alert hugged both red shins with his arms, and rested his face between the farm-mech’s two red feet. This was so perfect.  
So perfect.  
He nested himself on his master, and patiently waited for Inferno’s spike to slowly decrease back to its normal size. He may have even offlined for an astrosecond.  
The next thing he registered was his master lifting him up by his arm, and he held on to the stronger mech, unwilling to let him go.   
“You are so perfect” Inferno whispered to him.  
Red Alert guessed this statement may have not been true in all situations, but right here, right now, he was not going to argue with his master.


	5. My spike / Your spike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dubcon scene anon asked for, part two. M-rate without future notice.

Turntide marched past the prison cells, wasting one or two blink at their contents, but commenting only with one, satisfied groan. It clearly pleased him to see Jazz and Sunstreaker alive behind those bars, as he had plans with them for the future. But first things first.  
He made optic contact with the third Autobot prisoner.  
“....you...?” The mech didn’t seem to believe his sensors. That red glow.... there was something oddly familiar in that red glow....  
“I will break you” he hissed back, and even the strongest Decepticon guards shivered at the cruel tone of his words. Good.  
\---------------  
The rain continued. Sometimes it was falling on the mountain as if the whole Rust Sea wanted to flood out and conquer the high land, sometimes it was just coming down from the sky drop by drop. In these, rare periods, even Red Alert wandered as far as the first few rows.  
The sheets, as Inferno explained to him, were not to prevent the acid making contact with the solar panels. He had been spraying an alcalic buffer on them in the production period, and the sun had dried those layers on the large squares, making them acid-resistant. The point of the sheets was to prevent the entirety of the three-quartex monsoon washing that layer away.   
Other days Red Alert found Inferno in front of the energon reserves, and his troubled face spoke clearly: this won’t be enough for the whole monsoon.   
Not that they consumed much, they really didn’t. They spent most of their time offline or at least half asleep, and most of their activities were limited to self-defense lessons and repairs and very-very few occasions of interfacing. And, of course, Inferno’s patrols.  
“Inferno, what is amiss? Please, don’t tell me ‘nothing’ because I know it’s not true.”  
The red mech stared at the reserves, and for the first time, Red Alert had seen him hopeless.  
“You can borrow some from Bulkhead” he pointed out.  
“Yes, if these last long enough till the ‘spark’, yes. Quote already told me that he would bring me a loadful if needed, even during the rain. The real problem is....”  
“Is why you need that much.” Red Alert finished the sentence. Even he had noticed that more energon was missing than what the two of them consumed, yet Inferno didn’t mention any further thefts. The security mech also noticed how the ‘empty’ barrels of hazardous waste were one by one moving to the ‘full’ pile behind his back.   
“Cybercrosis in incurable” Inferno finally started. “But its progress can be slowed down by a method Infernalis taught me as a ‘spark flush’. You may have never heard about it.”  
“No.”  
“It means decanting the innermost energon of the patient and filling up its place with fresh energon. This can slow down the process of the chronic form. Horsepower’s spark is very strong, he is a real fighter. During the summer, his frame reacts very well to the treatment, but during the rain, preserved energon doesn’t help nearly as much as sun-energon would.”  
So that was in those green-marked barrels. The curdled innermost energon of a chronic cybercrosis patient. All the rules and precaution regarding the liquid suddenly made sense.   
“You intended to collect more energon for him right before the onset of the monsoon” Red Alert nodded. “You wanted to use fresher energon than what could be harvested back in the summer. You didn’t count with the turbofox leaking the lines and the early rain.”  
“Something like that. And Bulkhead, obviously, only has preserved energon, which won’t do much good for Horsey. I watch as he is getting weaker, slower, ponderous and torpid. I watch him lumpering across the land where he once galloped, and my own spark hurts with the realization that he will not stay with me for long.”  
“Would it help you that Bulkhead and I will be by your side when he passes away?” Red Alert finally managed. Of course he could not offer the level of loyalty Horsepower represented. At the age of nine thousand vorns, Inferno was his forty-ninth owner. Horsepower belonged to his cohort since his early sparklinghood.  
“I don’t want to lose him!” Inferno bursted out. Red Alert held him, pressed his helm against the bigger mech’s abdominal glass. “I don’t want anyone to try and replace him” he said, in a lot more quiet tone. He lifted Red Alert to his optic level, and held him tight. “I don’t want to even think about anybot replacing him. You, or anyone else.”  
“I understand” Red Alert whispered. Inferno gently put him back on the ground. “Let’s continue cleaning.”  
They did, they worked speechlessly for two joors and a half. Red Alert tried to provide the little comfort he could offer, but Inferno (gratefully) declined. To his processor, the idea of enjoying himself with his pretty security expert translated as cheating an old friend.   
“You’re driving yourself crazy” Red Alert pointed out the other day. “You’re doing the best you can. Nobot could have prepared for a monsoon this long, this early. Harsh weather happens. He has already lived longer than some of the mechs I once protected.”  
“And he had a good life, I know. I pinged Rossum after you brought it up. I was hoping for some advice. He...”  
“Yes?”  
“He told me to keep the empty spark casing, and save it for future studies, because nobot has ever lived this long with documented cybercrosis.”  
“Perhaps one day Rossum will find a cure. Horsepower won’t live to see that, but he can contribute to it. Possibly.”  
“How could I sell the empty spark casing of Horsey?!”  
It was hard, yes, and Red Alert knew it would be even harder. Innermost energon, especially that of a huge beast like Horsepower, could not be replaced with energon preserves.   
“Look.... I heard about a concentrate. A purifier, they call it. The treated energon would possibly be more suitable for spark-energon substitute.”  
Inferno made an unreadable face, then turned around.  
“And who would deliver it in this weather?”  
“Vosians.... many of them are flyers. As soon as we set up the longrange comm, you can order it.”  
Inferno shook his head. Air mail delivery wasn’t cheap, he guessed the purifier would cost even more. He would really have to sell Red Alert to the Praxians if he wanted to buy it.... if he wanted to lengthen Horsepower’s life. Perhaps his suffering only.   
His recharge was restless and uneasy. Red Alert, who was on self-appointed guard duty while his master was offline, eventually sat down on his berth, and murmured reassuring words to him, words that barely registered. He didn’t want his master to feel alone.   
The next morning was almost mild after the horrible thunderstorms. The rain was steady, but not as harsh as before. Almost bearable.  
“Activate your force field, and follow me.”   
Red Alert obeyed without asking what exactly his master desired.  
They drove past the covered solar panels, down to the swollen Echobreak river. They turned upwards, in the direction of Sideswipe’s farm. Red Alert could see what was left of the harvesting pot that he didn’t get to the garage. It wasn’t a pleasing sight.  
Almost on the border line between the two farms, in the cover of the mountain rocks, stood Horsepower’s equerry.   
The old predacon was watching them as they approached, but didn’t reveal himself until they both transformed. Then the beast marched out of the cave where he resided, and walked to Inferno.  
His movements resembled those of an old drone, his joints queaked with every step he made. They could hear his transformation cog spinning in vain, as he probably tried to transform. Maybe he considered walking on just two legs wouldn’t be as hard as moving all four limbs?   
Inferno patted the old beast, rubbed his shining cover plates, and called him into the stall. More like because he understood the gesture and not because he heard any of his words, the fifteen metrics long predacon obeyed.  
Once they were all inside, Inferno gave Red Alert a pile of tissue sheets and a flask of dampener.   
“Apply very gently” he said. This was the first time Red Alert could pick up a shade of fear from his vocalizer when they were in Horsepower’s company.   
“What are you afraid of?”  
He immediately regretted asking, but he couldn’t take his words back.  
For a long while, Inferno didn’t say anything. Only when they were half done and he checked the almost-white, wet sheets, did he reply. He sounded to be a lot calmer.  
“Rossum expects that the ununtrium would decay when his spark eventually gives up” he explained. “It is an instable material. Only the radiation of a strong spark keeps it as it is – and it seems Horsey’s not that bad yet. You know, it’s odd to speak about him in his presence.”  
“Would he understand, if he wasn’t deaf?” Red Alert asked. “I don’t know much about a predacon’s intelligence” he added. To be honest, most of his knowledge seemed baseless prejudice towards a magnificient and strong breed.  
“I don’t know. He obviously knows who Rossum is, and he also knows the difference between health and cybercrosis. He knows that most of his life is over, and I think he accepted this. More and more I find him near Infernalis’s grave, and I think he is.... how could I say it? Getting ready for the journey.”  
Red Alert looked at the sheet he was holding. Despite the rain, only some little dust and mud had stained the textile, there was no rust that would have indicated the lack of Horsepower’s protective superheavymetal.   
“Come here, city-mech. I want you to see how this is done.”  
He prepared a barrel and a cone, and the dragonhorse already knew what was about to come. He stepped closer, and allowed the panels above his spark to be folded away.   
Behind them was a sickly green, corroded-looking lightsource. Still, the most powerful one that the security-mech had ever witnessed.  
“He needs to stand very still, or else I would scratch his naked spark” Inferno explained. He was holding a tiny tool that consisted of a long handle and a small sieve. He removed some of the crust from Horsepower’s innermost energon, and let the crusts fall into the barrel. He then filled the spark-chamber with pure, bright pink energon.   
During the entire process, the beast didn’t move. As far as Red Alert could tell, he was very disciplined, but not enjoying it a bit. But he seemed to be aware that Inferno was trying to help him.  
They waited for about a breem, then the farm-mech repeated the process. After two more rounds, the spark’s original color could be seen: it was still green, but an entirely different shade, bright, and glowing with lifeforce.  
Inferno closed the barrel, but decided not to seal it yet. He would put one more dose of the crusty green liquid into it. He couldn’t tell how long the monsoon will last, afterall. He might have not had enough barrels.  
“Go forward, Red Alert” he finally said. “Take a shower, I will go after you. I would like to spend some quality time with Horsey.... while I still can.”  
However, the beast looked up when the white mech turned around. Before the city-mech could have transformed, he stood up, and, defying his condition, he hurried to the door of the equerry and blocked the way.  
“Inferno, I think your beast doesn’t want me to go.” That was what he told his master. To himself, he was telling that he’s not claustrophobic and wasn’t going to let Horsepower glitch him out again.   
Inferno gave a hand signal, to which the predacon turned around and went back to his owner. But he kept an optic on Red Alert, and the moment he transformed, the dragonhorse jumped up and stormed after him.   
“Come back!”  
Red Alert turned around, with the aged predacon in his back. He guessed this was the old beast’s way of saying he wouldn’t let him go.  
“He wants you to stay.”  
“So I have noticed” Red Alert murmured as he transformed to robot mode. The predacon immediately calmed down.  
“No, you don’t understand” Inferno said. “He’s saying that he wants you by my side.”

.

That night Inferno recharged with Red Alert sitting next to him, and then he stayed in the tidy guest-room while Red Alert had powered down. He had a lot to think about.   
His own attachment to Horsepower was one thing. But didn’t it root in the fact that, after Infernalis’s death, the predacon was his only company? And now this setup had changed. He wasn’t alone with the beast anymore. And just as he told Red Alert a few joors ago: Horsepower was aware that he didn’t have much time left. He didn’t consider the white city-mech as a substitute for him, or at least, not an unworthy, unwanted substitute. In his opinion, Red Alert was here to stay with them. With him, Inferno corrected himself. Him, because they were preparing for a time when Horsey would be no more. So, how to tell an old deaf friend that he was just one of the many mechs who owned Red Alert for some little time? How could he explain to him that Red Alert wanted to leave for Praxus, and the only reason why he was still here with them was the early onset of the monsoon weather that prevented them sending the message to the elegant city-state?   
He wondered if the Praxians would really pay him five hundred barkers for the security expert. With that, he could have easily afforded to buy the energon purifier, with air mail delivery. Or possibly he could also buy a new predacon, if he’d sank as low as to consider a living mechanism as some marketable good to sell and/or replace.   
He would keep in touch with the pretty mech, he told himself. He would invite him for the harvest celebration, and the mid-vorn event, probably along with his new-old owners. He would make sure he was doing well.  
It was odd how none of his old masters ever looked for him. The latest one, whose name he had never mentioned, had him for two vorns. He tortured him, raped him, and not one of the former owners stood up and took Red Alert back. Even if he supposed the latest master prohibited Red Alert calling for help, couldn’t any of his former masters read his gestures, his choice of words, his many panic-seizures? Why hadn’t had any of them notice that their former protector needed help, badly?  
No, he decided. Selling him back to the Praxians was out of question until he had discussed his questions and doubts with them.  
He went back to sit on the berth of the guest room, and touched the offline mech’s pretty helm. He was such a piece of applied art. Those sharp optics, now dull grey, that had spotted an oxide shark eight hundred megamiles away? And then, the sudden change of posture when he remembered being sold for so cheap.  
It must have felt just as humiliating from the inside as it was shameful for an outsider. He wouldn’t do that to the white mech, he decided. He couldn’t. Not even if it was a sacrifice to let him save Horsepower. He blinked out of the large window, at the rain that hid the panorama. Red Alert had truly liked this place. Well, not the rainy season, it had to be a partial sensory deprivation for him, but the harvesting time, that he had really seemed to enjoy. Physical work wasn’t exactly his specialty, but he was very helpful with the drones and if the war continued in Kaon, who knows when would another turbofox show up? This one had done enough damage to the energon cables, and he could not let hunters play around in his farm. If a weapon had enough firepower to take down a turbofox, it would also be able to damage a solar panel. Not to mention the danger of a hunter accidentally hitting an energon cable. He would have to offline and empty out the whole production line for every hunt. No, he would only let the beautiful city-mech leave his farm if he would ask for it. Self-sacrifice doesn’t count.  
According to his chrono, the night was almost over. Not that it would matter under these conditions, as the solar panels wouldn’t activate. But his partner, yes, he would.   
Just about a breem later, Red Alert onlined in front of him.  
“Hello, city-mech. You are so pretty when you sleep.”  
“Haven’t you seen me offline before? Good morning, Inferno.”  
“There was nothing good about it until you woke up to ask silly questions” the red mech pointed out. “Would you mind if I joined you?”  
With that, he lay down on the berth, next to his pretty company. He threw an arm around Red Alert, who immediately nested his helm in his master’s armpit, sensors set on full capacity. He touched his left shin to Inferno’s right thigh, and listened to the larger mech’s gently purring engines. He was not going to ask if Inferno wanted anything from him. He knew that this moment was perfect for both of them as it was. The monsoon season was about being comfortable without the outside world, and there was no need to hurry. If his master planned an interface for the morning, fine, but that didn’t seem to be urgent. And after that, they would still lie back to this position, and continue what they were doing, which was nothing. He turned towards the bigger mech, and caressed his left side with his hand. In return, the red mechanism held him closer, still nothing concrete demand, only for his company. With virtually any other owner, he would have been already working hard to excite the other’s spike, whether he would have really wanted to be fragged, or not. Not with Inferno. This mech was very different, and not just in his demands.  
“You taught me not to be afraid” he finally admitted. “Can you guess how scared I was when you first brought me here?”  
“And how scared I was, when you stated that you wanted me, what was your word? ‘Experienced’?”   
“If you would have done something wrong, rather with me, than with your future Certain Special Somebot.”  
“Stop teasing me.”  
“I’m serious. Who would have taught you what goes where? Just imagine telling him that you had had me for at least one rainy season, and all that happened was me teaching you how to open a stasis cuff. That would have been ridiculous.”  
“Why? Besides, we have also packed away all the spare drone parts, and cleaned up in all the sheds, got rid of that ton of expired preservatives, cleaned up in the house twice, put together the long-distance comm, repaired all the rain-damaged energifiers, and best of all, you have not had a seizure for almost a quartex now. Which of these do you not consider an achievement?”  
“Hmmmm.”  
“What would you call an achievement, really?”  
“Teaching you how to swim.”  
“Hah! You’re evil.”  
“It would be a rather useful skill now, admit it.”  
“You know that I’m not going to swim. I’m not going into any water above knee level.”  
“Knee level? That would be measured while you’re sitting in it.”  
“Primus-slagging NO. I’m willing to go into a fire anytime, but I won’t let anything liquid near my valve again. Or, what was left of it.”  
Red Alert sat up. “How do you mean, ‘what was left of it’? You certainly can’t mean you don’t even know if your valve remained functional?”  
“It wasn’t functional when the accident happened. It could have any kind of malformation. I wasn’t in a hurry to get it checked.”  
“You don’t even know?!” Red Alert was shocked. “And when do you want to find out? When your Certain Special Somebot looks down, and discovers that something is probably missing?”  
“Stop talking like that. Please.”  
An order was an order, but a rather late one. Red Alert already jumped up, and turned to tease Inferno’s valve cover away.  
“Well, it looks quite normal” he reported after a klik. “It would be quite functional, if you would just overcome your understandable, but baseless fear.”  
“Not baseless, OK?”  
Red Alert sat on his heels, and looked his master in the optics.  
“Not baseless, fine. But you still have to admit....”  
“Sorry to interrupt you. When you were recoded, I mostly skipped the ‘berthing’ settings, do you remember that? But I did read one part of your log, and all your former masters preferred to use their spikes. Do you have any idea why was that?”  
Red Alert sighed. So was he really going to educate his master? It looked so.  
“A valve is sensitive. So much more than a spike. If both partners are prepared and consenting, the amount of pleasure is more or less the same. However, if anything goes wrong, and in an uneven relationship why wouldn’t, then a mech can still take pleasure with his spike and the worst he gets would be some disappointment. Now, if someone wanted to take another’s spike without their agreement, well, it is possible, but it takes a lot more preparation work, and eventually, they might also end up as the disappointed one. So it is, to sum it up, the difference in the effort one has to invest. If you wanted to use your spike, you can give me half a klik to prepare myself, and we would both be fine. If you wanted to use your valve, I would at least have to make sure it’s not dry.”  
“Well, I prefer my valve dry, thank you very much!”  
“You’re welcome.”  
With that, Red Alert dropped back to his berth, nested his sensitive helm in Inferno’s armpit. He only wanted to help, and his master was very well aware of this.  
“You helped me overcome the worst of my glitch-outs, why won’t you let me help you with yours?”  
“What do you plan to do?”  
“Use my experience. Spike preference doesn’t always mean the mech ignoring his valve altogether. Do I get your permission?”  
Sigh.  
“Whatever you have in mind, will you stop if I say no?”  
Primus, this was getting awkward. Of course he would.  
“Then let’s start with a break” Inferno suggested, and dropped his helm back to the berth. Red Alert nested his helm back into his armpit. It was hard to believe that in the sunny periods, his master actually was a morning person. 

.

Red Alert didn’t keep track of how many new abilities he had to add to his programming since Inferno bought him, but forming handmade glasses and cubes was certainly one of his favorites. On their way to the small workshop Inferno explained to him that energy-made cubes that solidify the already gelled energon were, originally, a necessity for transportation and they were created with the intention that the contents of the cube would be poured out to glasses before consumption. However, mechs very soon picked up the habit of drinking straight from the transport cube, and for them, manufacturers started producing cube-shaped holders so that ‘fuel would still look somehow’. But in the rural regions, the habit of drinking fuel from glasses remained and it became a tradition to greet urbans with ‘real’, cylinder-shaped glasses. If a welcomed guest was invited, many mechs would craft a gift glass before their arrival. These were always unique in shape and color, with the diameter specifically set to the guest’s hand size. And if someone wanted to express that his guest was welcome to return someday, they would also make a second glass, one that would remain at the host, so when the visitor would show up again, they could consume fuel from their own glass that had been set aside for them. Inferno showed the only such item in the farm: a red and green, graceful but sturdy piece of art was placed under a dust-proof lid. Rossum’s. It was uncomparably more detailed and artistic than those diecast glasses that Inferno normally kept at hand near the energon tap.  
Red Alert took the hint: Inferno had suggested that he crafted welcome-gifts for the Praxians. And while he was busy with piecing together small shards of metal and welding them together with molten silica, Inferno also seemed to be busy with something behind his back. It was mostly red and pure white, esthetically restrained, but with its simplicity, it was still gorgeous.   
“Well, city-mech” Inferno said when he was ready “as you know, you rolled into my life quite unexpectedly. I don’t know how long you are going to stay, but as long as you do, I want you to remember that you are precious to me. And when you decide to move on, you will remember the farm-mech whose energon you might happen to be drinking from it. And if you will ever feel the need to return, you won’t need to bring it back, as your glass, identical to this one, will be waiting for you in here.”

.

There were less favorable aspects of preparing for the other city-mechs’ oncoming visit, thought. Many times did Red Alert remind his master of the lack of an in-house washrack, but he didn’t quite mean that the two of them should build it through many rainy days and just as rainy nights. Inferno had ample spare parts for different tubes and pumps, as the energon lines out in the field had needed constant maintenance. Bringing up the walls of the structure, however, was left to the two mechs.   
Just like in the harvest season, Inferno took the hardest physical work to himself, and left Red Alert alone to manage all the design and inventory. After all, the city-mech was expected to know how a normal, comfortable, convenient washrack’s interior looked like. Red Alert wasn’t sure if a huge oil tube wasn’t overkill, or if the lotion vaporizer cubicle was necessary to be set to a cruiser’s size, but Inferno decided that he had the space anyway, so why would he do a half-job. The only real difference was in the amount of acid-reactive cement they used up, and he had been planning to get rid of the mass anyway. He had bought a little too much of it when he had built the silo a few vorns back.   
Even that tedious work was over before the ‘spark of the monsoon’. While Red Alert celebrated under the shower of some warm solvent, Inferno sneaked out of the mansion behind his back to try and clean out Horsepower’s innermost energon from the crusts and curd for the second time that day. He didn’t want to admit, not even to the mech closest to him, that the traditional method didn’t seem to help anymore. He blamed it on the preservatives he mixed into the energon. He considered buying refined energon for this purpose, but then he dropped the idea. If that would be of any use against the dreaded cybercrosis, the doctors would have already proven that. He had more faith in the purifier that he couldn’t afford. At least, as he told himself, he wouldn’t be disappointed later, when he would find out that it didn’t help.   
Self-defense lessons were a little relief to both of them. They were careful not to make it too serious, not to turn their playful battles into actual fights, and they spent a lot of time repairing each other’s dented and scratched plating afterwards. This lead to many snarky comments about how the other couldn’t take care of his master / property.  
Even in their solitude behind the thick curtain of acid rain, they heard the news of an exacerbating war in Kaon and Tesarus. 

.

Red Alert was lying with his ventral plates on the perfectly clean floor of the mansion, his face towards the open door. The rain was still pouring down from the clouds, and the hillside looked more like a riverbed than an energon farm. His perception of the weather, however, was greatly blurred as his processor was occupied with Inferno’s chest panel pressing against his back kibble, his red elbows holding him in place at his shoulder-wheels, and plates of a brighter grey face rubbing his red helm’s sensors.   
“More” he gasped. “More of you.”  
Inferno’s spike pressed against his valve’s outer cover plates, and a moment later the first panels retracted, giving just enough space for the tip that would rub against his inner sensors, gradually getting access to more and more of Red Alert’s frame. They could both feel the size-adapting protocols activate, the friction and the lubricant making way for the spike, yes, for that wonderful red spike that provided so much pleasure for the two of them. Red Alert moaned with pure lust as more and more of Inferno’s spike penetrated him, it was a wonderful sensation he couldn’t imagine he once lived without. In fact, Red Alert found himself addicted to Inferno as a whole.   
It was a miracle how fast he’d learnt to trust this mech. After Metroplex had to pass him on, he believed he would never develop the same feeling again. It was such a luxury for the security expert to power down all his defense subroutines and to enjoy the present without worrying about the future. All he had to do was relax and let Inferno do whatever he wished, because by now he was confident that the mech wouldn’t cause anything bad to him. To his surprise, even their size difference turned out to be more of an advantage than a source of pain. There was some discomfort due to the extreme sensory input, but Inferno was very careful with him. The moment Red Alert went stiff and silent, Inferno pulled his knees closer to his body, and lifted his own butt to the air. At this angle, he would still enjoy the white mech’s complete valve, but the back kibble provided enough cover that he couldn’t have hurt the smaller one. And after that little rearrangement of his parts, the city-mech continued purring and moaning under him, and giving other small voices of lust and arousal. And he whispered back while playfully chewing on the security specialist’s sensitive audials.   
“Hello, pretty. You’re perfect.”  
“So are you.”  
“I wouldn’t live without you.”  
“You’re part of my life.”  
“I’m proud to be.”  
And after their processor-blanking overloads, they both simply dropped back to the floor, holding each other in a different position, but just as strongly, just as happily, with a new shade of satisfaction on their frames, and a new tone of bliss in their voices as they continued their banter.  
“My entire frame is sore now, in a very good sense.”  
“Maybe I should go easy on you during training, eh?”  
“As if it wasn’t me who piled you up on the draught drone yesterday.”  
“And? I’ve put an empty barrel on your head.”  
“I will sooo make you regret that move.”  
“Try it. I will fold you into that barrel today.”  
“You will try.”  
“Challenge accepted.”  
And, since neither of them moved, Red Alert nested his helm in that incredibly comfortable position in Inferno’s armpit, ready for a quick recharge.  
“This was wonderful” he murmured, as if to himself.  
“So I have heard.”  
Red Alert rubbed his helm against Inferno’s arm. Somehow, it felt bad to him that he could not return this type of treatment, despite his spike also being Inferno’s property.   
“You don’t know what you are missing.”  
“Tell my valve.”  
“I wish I could, but you won’t let me!”  
“No, I won’t.” With that, Inferno dropped into recharge mode. His decision was final, for now.  
Being left as the one on guard duty, Red Alert increased the sensitivity of his long-distance sensors. All he heard was the distant thunder and the close downpour of the rain. All he saw was the flooding river running down the hill, and his metal-sensor picked up no movement outside. He rested an elbow on Inferno’s chest, just above the sturdy glass, and sat up. He looked into the stubborn mech’s motionless face, then, at a whim, he pinged Shine for some advice.   
Shine was happy to hear from him, but he was unable to help as he was facing the same problem: most of his clients could not think beyond their spikes, and he was getting slightly bored with being the valve-mech all the time. He was planning to give some discount to clients who would also try interfacing the other way round, but GranMac wasn’t really in favor of any sagging. Eventually, they wished good luck to each other and promised to let the other know if they found out anything.  
After that, Red Alert stood up and started circling in the mansion. He considered carrying his offline master to his berth. Maybe Inferno wouldn’t be happy with him lifting such weight, but in fact, the security mech wasn’t nearly as fragile as sometimes Inferno seemed to think. And it didn’t feel right to let his master sleep on the floor after an intense interfacing.  
But well. The starting point of the action was to prove how tidy the floor was. They spent half an orn scrubbing up the dust that had accumulated in an entire vorn. Inferno was not kidding when he had said that he had only cleaned up when he had nothing better to do. Red Alert wondered if he could break this habit and keep his master’s estate clean all around the vorn.   
His glaze fell on the cupboard and to the holder where the tissues had been hanged for drying. A very odd trophy wall, the red mechanism grinned. Then he blinked at the energon dispensor he’d constructed from the leftovers of the washrack-building. Two diecast glasses were standing there, their dents still visible, and the only intentional distinction between them were the small cyberoglyphs near the edges. Red Alert took the handmade glass out of his subspace, and considered setting it there. But it looked horribly out of place.  
The white and red mechanism stared out into the thunderclouds, then turned back to his recharging owner. He wasn’t sure about his future anymore. Until recently, he’d been a valuable property, something wealthy mechs would pay a fortune to own. It was the known and long since accepted way of his functioning: to be bought, to be used, and eventually, to be sold to the next owner. His experience and knowledge had increased with every step, so did his strategic value. But he had started glitching after Metroplex had disappeared, and the more his masters got bored and irritated by his issues, the worse the condition became. The discovery of his unintentional self-protection didn’t help either. His latest master had simply laughed at the idea of the Praxians (or anybot else) bothering with him. He had stated that he had been more of a nuisance than any useful value for them. That master was a rather evil mech, but he had very, very rarely been wrong about business.   
Now, with this glass, Inferno had clearly labeled him as ‘guest’. Which indicated that he hadn’t counted on him staying in New Argent for long. So how much had he really meant for him?   
Red Alert sat down on the floor, so close to the open door that the waves of the wild-running river had almost reached his feet. He had spotted the rainclouds and warned his master, and indirectly, the rest of New Argent’s inhabitants, too. He wondered how long it would have taken for him to bring back his price if he had been sold for what he was truly worth. Normally that was a good estimation of how much time he would spend at any given owner. Thinking back, he had been quite a good investment, and a very useful tool for anybot wealthy enough to have something to lose. And, apart from his one-time buying price, he was rather cheap in the everydays. His fuel and maintenance had cost much less than the keep of those large bodyguards most rich robots had preferred. He must have been immodest, but he was rather proud to worth what he was.   
He wondered what would happen to Inferno after he would be sold. He had kept track of most of his former masters, some called this a bad habit, some had called it loyalty. But how would he be able to monitor a farm-mech out here in the middle of nowhere?  
He synchronized his chrono to the changes of ‘rain in dim light’ and ‘rain in no light’, and concluded that the sunset was near. Not that they would see much of it. Perhaps this was why Inferno had powered down so often and for so long. It was more than enough if one of them had been awake.   
He heard his master booting up behind him. He stayed motionless, he didn’t even finch when those well-known hands patted his helm and shoulder joint.   
“You can go up to your berth if you want. I will go and look around, who knows if I’ll find another petrorabbit. One that we can actually save.”  
Red Alert stood up, and swallowed back a comment about his master visiting Horsepower twice a day. He only nodded, and waited patiently for Inferno’s return. He didn’t want him to feel alone.  
He pinged Shine, they chatted for about a breem. The white and chrome mech lamented about the horrible weather that kept everybot in their homes, and the unusually social young robot was suffering from the loneliness. GranMac had powered down over a quartex ago and had told him not to wake her until the monsoon was over. The closest thing he had to ‘company’ were a few text files in a scratched old reader device, and he had read each and every one of those about six times already. Red Alert suggested that he turned to Click for new book files, as his master had once mentioned the villager’s great library and love for reading. Shine thanked for the idea, but added that Click was a horribly introvert mech whom he had never seen in the Death Row. Red Alert supposed this didn’t mean that he wouldn’t allow him to read his books, as long as Shine applied self-restraint and didn’t push him out of his comfort zone.   
After they had talked, Red Alert’s blink fell on the long-range communicator in the corner. It was perfectly operable, one only needed to extend its antenna through the mansion’s window. Inferno must have been toying with the idea of buying that energon purifier. Yet the antenna had no more acid-marks than those already there after the quick call with Rossum.   
He picked up Inferno’s energy signature as the mech stepped into the first washrack, and activated a shower of alcalic buffer. After the toxic rain had been washed off his frame, Inferno rolled into the mansion and transformed next to the energon tap. He poured a glass of preserved fuel, and only after having consumed it did he start drying himself.  
“There’s a pit of a thunder outside” he said.   
Red Alert stepped behind him, and offered to help drying his back kibble. Inferno soon found himself sitting on a sturdy stool, and passively watched as his white city-bot wiped his frame dry. He relaxed into the soft touch of the tissue, the gentle rub, and the melody Red Alert kept humming. He realized, and not for the first time, that the city-mech was happy with him, despite all the difficulties.   
He wasn’t sure if the white mech would be equally happy with the Praxian security service.  
“I hear you like being here” he finally muttered.  
“Yes, I do, Inferno” was the reply. In addition, the mech started chewing on his large red kibble, as if trying to lick the remnants of the liquids away. Then he continued his ministrations with his left side, and went on to the edges of his large chest glass. Inferno leant back and enjoyed the harmless attention. Since he wasn’t ordered to stop, Red Alert soon started drying the suspensions of his side-wheels, wiping the textile under the base of his gears with clever fingers and removing a pebble from his wheel’s furrow with his dental plates. To do this, Red Alert knelt down next to the stool, and once he was there, he continued licking his master’s frame from the sturdy abdominal panel, through the transformation gap on his waist, down to the spike cover. Just a few more astroseconds, and that black cover-plate retracted to reveal the large but rather familiar red spike. Then, he continued licking that.   
Suddenly, he found Inferno’s hand on his helm as he gently pushed his head away.   
“Hey, Red. I guess I know what you have in mind, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I would. There’s no need for you to humiliate yourself by just giving pleasure and not taking any.”  
Red Alert looked into his master’s optics.  
“I really wouldn’t mind” he finally said. “It is a very natural thing to do if I see that my master needs some relief but is too tired to put in any effort. Your entire frame is taxed by worrying. Let me help you relax.”  
“But what would be in it for you?” Inferno asked back.  
Really, that wasn’t the question Red Alert ever considered. The most honest answer would have been ‘nothing’, or possibly ‘nothing more than your pleasure’. However, he doubted that his master would allow him to continue if he had said anything like that.  
“It calms me down” he finally replied. “Makes me feel useful. I would be happy to provide anything you need. Please, allow me to continue.”  
Inferno ran careful fingers on his red helm, which Red Alert very soon translated as an unspoken permission. Soon, his master was quietly panting above him as he licked his spike in its entire length, then took the whole apparatus into his mouth, and continued sucking it, while his glossa was still running on it up and down on as much as it could reach. As he felt his owner’s tension finally transferring, turning from an all-frame worry into an oncoming overload, Red Alert turned his neck in an angle so that the transfluid would go directly into his fuel tank. It wasn’t like he normally liked the taste (or the simple knowledge that he would be running on the internal liquid of another mechanism) but it was still better than getting it sprayed across his face or trying in vain to swallow it later. And he was obviously not going to spit out his owner’s transfluid. That was not going to happen.  
Still, he couldn’t help the bad feeling when his master looked into his optics again, and repeated the ‘what’s in it for you’ question.  
“I’m doing what you need” he replied, struggling to hide his grimace at the not-so-good aftertaste.   
“Do what you feel like doing” Inferno murmured to him. “Not what you feel compelled to do. I won’t hold it against you if you find some other use of your mouth that has nothing to do with anybot’s spike.”  
“Seriously?”  
Inferno realized the trap, but the positive answer was already out. “Seriously.”  
Red Alert, still kneeling in front of Inferno’s stool, lifted up both hands and grabbed the larger mech’s wrists with them. He pushed his master backwards, to the point where his helm and back kibble rested against the wall and his torso was diagonal. In this position, Inferno’s tight-held valve panels became visible, and they were still covered in the remains of the buffer solvent.   
With both hands up in the air, Red Alert dove under for the proverbial treasure hunt, and licked Inferno’s valve cover until it opened.   
And what a wonderfully personal smell it held. So dense and so welcoming, so unique. And in a very long time (less than a vorn’s time short of Inferno’s entire life so far) he was the first to investigate it.  
He held Inferno’s arms tight, fingers on the tense macro-hydraulics, thumbs on the strong palmar plates. He sat on one heel, ready to jump if his master would react like he did on the first night.   
“You can’t be serious....!”  
“I am” Red Alert replied as he looked up with a cheeky smile. “You helped me overcome my silliest fears. I’m determined to do the same to you.”  
He could tell just how tense Inferno became when his glossa slid along the internal side of his valve for the first time. But, great, he didn’t panic.  
“Privilege” Red Alert purred.  
“Idiot” his master replied. “You found a loophole. Happy now?”  
“Yes.”   
The smaller mech kept teasing him, his valve and his mind alike. Eventually, his reward was the first drop of lubricant, which he licked up and swallowed happily. So much about the horrible aftertaste in his mouth. Transfluid was truly never meant to be consumed as fuel, but valve lubricant was an entirely different substance. Somewhere he’d even heard about jellified energon being used as a substitute.   
Red Alert remembered the farm-mech’s nasty remarks about processed energon, and decided not to talk about this aspect. Besides, it seemed Inferno wouldn’t ever need any replacement for his lubricant, as his own excretion reacted quite normally. The more he kept teasing the sensitive area, the more he had to lick up.   
Inferno, well, he was enduring the treatment on the thin line between arousal and panic. He didn’t want this, not even with Red Alert’s obvious good intention, but he couldn’t go back on his word. So he tried to relax, and accepted the obviously enjoyable service.   
Red Alert knew he was taking advantage of his master’s careless promise, so he held himself back and paid attention not to apply too much stimulation for the first time. What he was doing was already a lot more than what Inferno would have normally tolerated, and he was grateful for his master giving him a chance. Maybe he would slowly learn to accept such stimulus if he realized that a wet valve doesn’t necessarily mean acid burn, lavage tools, or doctors talking about never waking from induced stasis. And even if that would not happen, at least Inferno had an evening without stress. Either way, he was doing his master good.  
And what has in it for him, this time? One word: victory.


	6. My life / Your life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be warned of ethically rather questionable decisions and character death.

As the Decepticons lead their quivering prisoner along the corridor, the beaten Autobot fell to the ground right in front of Sunstreaker’s cell.  
“Sunny” he whispered. “Do you remember Ever?”  
The golden yellow warrior was doing only slightly better than his dragged-away fellow. But at the mention of that name, he turned his left wrist’s panel. On the inner side of the metallic plate, an old, graved line of cyberoglyphs became visible. ‘Don’t you give up. Ever.’  
“Of course, I do” he replied.  
The other Autobot was dragged to his feet and carried away, to the officer’s room.  
\--------------------  
Sideswipe and Ever were rolling around in the ‘spark of the monsoon’, enjoying the sunlight after the long confinement. They knew the leniency was short, a matter of joors only, but they both needed to spin up their wheels after being crumpled in the acid-proof buildings. Ever seemed to have even forgotten some details about his own transformation, but when Sideswipe helped him out, he finally managed and rolled as if nothing had happened.   
The crystal seeds were glowing in a promising pink shade, and Ever commented that these were going to bring back what was lost to the early rain. This year’s harvest was due to compensate the farmers for their losses.  
Suddenly, they both looked up as a Seeker’s engines echoed from the valley. From above the clouds, a volatile mechanism descended, his shields pure white with some delicate green edges. As he transformed, they could see the elegant golden box he was holding.  
“Mr. Sideswipe? This is for you.”  
The red farm-mech stared.  
“What? Already...?”  
“Now was the time for a safe delivery” the white Seeker replied.   
With shaky hands, Sideswipe reached for the beautiful golden box. A blue spark’s energy was calling for him.  
“Can I....”  
“Yours.” Without further delay, the Seeker placed the radiant sun-gold box into Sideswipe’s arms, and took off. The red mech was left standing on the hillside with the gift, shocked and unspeakably happy at the same time.   
“I think I missed the naming ceremony” Ever reminded.  
The red mech looked up at the clouds that were growing on them again. In just a klik, the hillside was covered in darkness again, with the only lightsource being the golden surface of the box as it mirrored the last visible rays.  
“Sunstreaker” the proud red mech decided.

.

The rain was still falling like it had before, but Red Alert’s sensor picked up something. He wasn’t sure if he had heard anything, maybe that was just a roar of thunder, but it could have also been some movement. Eventually, since he was not allowed outside in this weather (he would have ended up in the Echobreak just like Inferno had when he was young) he decided to tell his master, who didn’t hesitate to go and search for life signs.   
Red Alert was waiting by the smaller washrack, weighting his possible futures. Indeed the Praxians were willing to buy him back, for seven hundred thousand shanix because they needed his valuable expertise in the tense interstate political situation. And, although he felt great with his new master, Red Alert knew he was much more needed in Praxus. He couldn’t make the decision, of course, and at the time Inferno was busy with harvesting some fresh sun-energon for Horsepower’s spark cleansing.  
Quote also dropped by with the promised preserves, and laughingly mentioned that he could barely transform after sitting around for too long. Then he looked around in the pristine estate, found a few drops of interface-fluids on the floor, and noted how his neighbors seemed to have spent the time in some other posture. Red Alert laughed, and didn’t tell him that he had taken what was left of Inferno’s factory seals only the day before.  
After the ‘spark’, his master seemed to have soothed down a little. The sun-energon did magic to the old predacon’s infected spark, he was happily trotting up and down in the rain, enjoying the reprieve from his sickness’s worsening symptoms. Inferno was unspeakably relieved to see his old beast enjoying life again.   
He was more concerned about the Praxians, though. He had not been present during the call, he had only seen it replayed, but he really didn’t like how those past owners reacted to Red Alert’s clear enthusiasm. One seemed to consider him as nothing but lost-and-found old tool of some use, the other looked as if he’d forgotten him completely. Of course, the security mech was quick to defend them both: he stated that’s how Prowl considers everybot, including himself, as a tool for some purpose, and Chromedome was not quite fond of remembering his failures.  
“What kind of failures?” Inferno inquired.   
“He’s a mnemosurgeon” Red Alert replied. “He tried to rid me of some certain lines of my slavery code. He suspected those to be causing my glitches.”  
“Let me guess. The slave coding is written in a way that it cannot be altered? Not even in mnemosurgery?”  
Red Alert grimaced. This simple farm-mech had just pointed out what the Institute’s prized expert failed to accept: if there was a way to alter the coding, half of the slaves would have hacked themselves free. Goodbye, industrial-scale mech building. If breaking such codes would have been that simple, he would have never been created. He would have never been given security programming, he would have never been trusted with the lives of mechs of great importance. He would.... not exist.  
“Something like that. He pointed out my unintentional self-defense reaction, and tried to remove some former masters from my memory. Coding-wise, that would have been doable. Only, I crashed hard three or four times in a breem – eventually, he gave up because he feared further manipulation would do more harm than good. But it was too late. I could no longer remember what exactly started the glitch cascade, so I became more sensitive to any potential harm. After I freaked out in the middle of a very important party, they decided to struggle with me no more.”  
“You were sold because of his fault?” Inferno asked. Suddenly those blurs he’d seen during recoding made sense: those were not (or not all of them were) removed confidential data, but parts of his past that a mnemosurgeon decided he’d better be without. But how come he could glitch even during the process? Perhaps there was no relay between patient and surgeon. That suggested an overly self-assured hacker.  
“He had only catalyzed an inevitable process. And I suppose they would have sold me anyway.” At this point, Red Alert threw his arms around Inferno, and rubbed his helm against the larger mech’s glass chest. “It’s so good to have a master I know I don’t have to be afraid of” he purred.   
After that, selling him back to the Praxians was out of question. They could visit him, he could visit them, but they would only possess the delicate mech over his dead body. And he wasn’t shy to let Red Alert know his opinion.  
But, well, this attachment was not going to get the purifier for Horsepower’s spark-washing energon, and the monsoon continued even worse after the ‘spark’ was over. And it was going to last two more quartexes.   
He’d spotted something white in the rain. Too large for a petrorabbit, but too small for a turbofox. And whatever it was, it was moving, trying to climb higher on the rocks, trying to hold its position against the flood of acid rainwater. Inferno immediately knew that he wouldn’t be able to reach it if he approached directly, the water’s flow was too strong and it would wash the creature away from him. No, he had to get below the white mech, and catch it when the acid washed it off its position.  
As he descended, he noticed some leaking wounds and a tangled front paw. He couldn’t make out the colors in the dim light, but he supposed he’d seen either blue or black highlights. This creature must have looked rather elegant before it ended up here. But that was no hint for what it could possibly be.   
Yellowish orange optics activated as he came closer, their shapes making it clear that they belonged to a predator. It was still too small for a turbofox. But as the beast understood what Inferno was doing, it finally let go of the rock it was holding on to, and let the water wash it straight into the large red mech’s arms. With such trust in a stranger, it could not be a wild animal.   
Once he had the small one in his arms, Inferno did not waste time with looking closer. He would do that later, in the comfortable dryness of his home.  
“So you found a cybercat?” Red Alert greeted him as he got out from under the shower with the white creature in his hand.   
“If you say so” Inferno replied. “I’ve never seen any of this type of beast before.”  
“Not beast” Red Alert corrected him. “He’s of a type of recordicons. Disposable class.... though I can’t imagine why would anyone dispose of one right here.”  
“Perhaps it escaped from the polities at war. Tesarus, Simfur, Helex, who can tell which state is next?”  
“He’s quite well maintained” Red Alert pointed out. “He hasn’t been out in the acid rain for long.” He pointed at the light blue nose, the blue joints, and added “I’d say he’s more of an assistant than a war refugee. In fact I wouldn’t even accept him in the mansion if it weren’t for the rule of the monsoon area.”  
“You suspect he’s a spy?”   
“More likely than not” Red Alert answered. “Was he conscious when you found him?”  
“Slightly” Inferno replied. “He was holding on to one of the panorama rocks, and he only let himself slip when he was sure I would catch him.”  
“He had no doubt about your intention. He must be familiar with this rule. Let’s see if I can read him.”  
Those first-aid welds were not going to hold for long if he would resist an outer transformation, Inferno noticed. “Go easy with him.”   
To their surprise, the cybercat complied with them, and even helped them to transform him, as if he had had something to tell.   
“I hope he’s not carrying a virus” Red Alert whispered before extending a wrist cable to the dataport.   
Inferno poured himself a glass of energon, and dried himself. Only to be dragged out to the rain again as soon as Red Alert finished reading the recordicon.  
“He wasn’t alone! He was flying in a sparked shuttle called Skyfire from Paradron. The shuttle’s telemetry was damaged, and he crashed somewhere here. Glit, that’s the designation of the cybercat, fell out of the shuttle’s hold.”  
“Do you have any coordinates for the shuttle, or do we only have the gravity to count with?”  
“How do you mean, to count with gravity?”  
“Wherever the shuttle crashed, it was washed in the same direction I had been” Inferno replied. “Come with me, I need your sensors.”  
“Can I at least lock him up somewhere?”  
Inferno stared at Red Alert, somewhat irritated by his lack of trust. “One of the guest rooms. Take at least four cubes with you, leave them in his paw’s reach” he ordered. “I will go get the chains.”  
Chains would have been overkill with these wounds, but Red Alert didn’t comment on that. He placed the uninvited mech in the room closest to his own, and locked the door properly as he left. Then he hurried down the ramp, where his master was waiting for him.  
They rolled silently. As they reached the border between cultivated area and the steep surfaces, Inferno descended first, Red Alert above him. The larger mech was careful to position himself lower than his lightweight specialist, so that even if the white robot would have slipped, he would have been able to catch him.   
“Just let the acid water carry you along” he said after he arrived at the rocks above the Rust Sea. “This is what happened to the shuttle, too, if he crashed into the mainland somewhere here.”  
“I picked up something” Red Alert informed his master. “A large mass of living metal – there! Can you see?”  
Inferno turned in the direction where the security mech had indicated. Indeed, they had found Skyfire. He looked like a small island that didn’t belong, a bright dot in the dark Rust Sea, an almost unmoving piece among the rushing waves.   
“That doesn’t leave me with choices” the red mech decided, and descended to the sea level.  
Only now did Red Alert understand why Inferno once had to be rescued from the shallow water. Some waves of the acid were as tall as a building. They could have crashed Inferno against the rocks if he wouldn’t have been paying attention.  
“Here, take the chain” Inferno said as he transformed. “Weld it to that rock. Weld it around once, link to link, then to the largest metal surface you can find.”  
“Yes, Inferno.”  
With the other end of the chain still in his subspace, Inferno transformed back to his rolling mode. This way he had more contact with the ground and his center of gravity was also lower. He cast one look at Red Alert, wondering if he would truly go back to the Praxians after he died.   
“Take care of Horsey if I don’t come back” he said, and drove into the heaving acid.   
The burning water was all around him. He could not escape it, he could not avoid it, he had to roll straight through the towering waves. The Rust Sea did not ask if he was afraid of the water or not. It reached him, everywhere, and of course his closed valve panels could not entirely exclude it, but that didn’t matter. That shuttleformer in front of him needed help, so he would help. Personal feelings were secondary. They did not matter at the moment.   
Red Alert pinged him, telling him that he was going great, so far. Just a hundred more metrics, and he would reach the shuttle.  
Not that Inferno could see anything in the rust-water. But he trusted Red Alert’s information, and he kept rolling. For the last few metrics, the sea was getting deeper, and he had to transform to robot mode. He should have done that at some point anyway, but in robot mode, he felt even more exposed to the elements.   
Finally, he was able to attach a loop of the chain to a landing gear he found, and prayed that it would not break off until they reached the land. Red Alert started to pull them to the shore.   
It may have been the hardest two breems for Inferno, holding the chain with one hand, pushing the wreck of the shuttle with the other, while the waves had been throwing them left and right in an unpredictable but hostile manner. He was thoroughly surprised that they made it to the land.   
“Good work! Now listen, Red Alert, it’s your turn. You will have to get to the garage alone. Bring the tractor drone, roll it down here. I will stay with the shuttle and weld what I can of his wounds, his energon is getting mixed with the acid. That’s about twice as bad as the loss of energon, you know? Take care and hurry!”  
So he did. If his master was able to overcome such fear, he would also make it uphill, alone, in the horrible rain while the acid was running down the slope. He approached the mansion in which a potential spy was been recovering. If his master was capable of his performance, he would also overcome his own weaknesses. Physical, mental, programming issues would not hold him.   
And when he was about to be washed back to the sea level nevertheless, Horsepower appeared behind his back. The aged beast pushed him upwards like he did on the first night of the monsoon. Red Alert made it to the garage, and activated the tractor drone. It might deactivate in such heavy acid, as the sparkless vehicle was not nearly as resistant as a living mech, but it did not matter. It was just a tool. The shuttleformer was alive, although most of his systems were either malfunctioning or offline.   
They finally managed to drag him to the mansion, and for the first time, Inferno was extremely glad that Red Alert designed a washrack with a shower large enough for the mistransformed shuttle. As he turned back, he could see the tractor drone’s remains being carried away by the acid flow, but he couldn’t care less about it. They had saved two lives.  
He wondered how Red Alert’s coding would process the fact that a free Vosian now owed him his life. He guessed that legally it would be a rather complicated situation. But when he brought it up while they were rinsing the off-white cover plates, Red Alert simply stated that this wasn’t the first time he’d saved strangers. He admitted he didn’t even keep count of the civilians he defended while in Praxus, for example. He wanted to share a story or two, but Skyfire started to boot up after his sensors reactivated and his systems registered the presence of other mechs around him.  
“Where’s Glit?” were his first words. “We must find Glit....”  
“He’s upstairs, Skyfire” Red Alert assured him. “Inferno found him before you. In fact, he was the one who asked for our help.”  
The shuttleformer thanked, and went entirely offline under the soothing alcalic stream.

.

When Glit onlined, he found two strangers standing next to a berth that was too big for his size. The place wasn’t familiar either.  
“Where am I?”  
“New Argent, Tagan polity” the smaller, white and red mech replied. “On the Southern side of the Stormy Range. Not quite the place one would expect you to land in the middle of the monsoon season.”  
“So Vos is.... how far away? I must call for help.... Skyfire is still out there.”  
“Skyfire is in the next room” the larger, red and white mech corrected him. Unlike the other one, his frame looked a lot more clumsier. Some rural structure, Glit guessed. Odd pairing.  
“He seems like he would really need your help, though. You are a medic, or so I have read.”  
“I am. But I can’t move my forelimbs.”  
As gently as he could, the farmer-looking one grabbed him. The closeness was familiar, it must have been the same mech as who carried him in from the rain. The cybercat purred, more like in reply to his good intentions, rather than because he felt comfortable in any sense.  
“So tell me how to patch up these energon lines.”  
Skyfire’s face spoke of a lot of pain and little consciousness, but as the two mechs brought Glit to his room, he finally relaxed. The locals followed the disabled medic’s instructions, and the shuttleformer seemed to have gotten better after a few hard kliks. The acid in his energon wasn’t easily neutralized, but the cybercat had to give the duo that they had done everything in their power. Skyfire was still in pain, but at least his most important systems were functional.  
“Glit....”  
The cybercat pushed himself closer, although his forelegs were not moving. Skyfire touched his head with one careful finger of his only functional hand, and looked up at the two mechs.  
“Thank you. We both owe you our lives.”  
“Then try and take care next time, will you?” Inferno patted the mech on what he supposed to be a shoulder. He was still in mid-transformation, so the farm-owner couldn’t tell for sure. Then he looked down at his companion, and quietly said, “I couldn’t have done it without you.”  
“I know, Inferno. I couldn’t have done my part, either.”

.

In a matter of breems, Shine pinged them with the long-range message he had sent to Vos and with the reply that arrived from the flyers’ state. Red Alert couldn’t be grateful enough. As it turned out, Skyfire was a xenobiologist, and he was scheduled to return from Paradron with the recordicon in his care. The Vosians had already been actively searching for them, as the shuttle was a long-time friend of their Winglord.   
While they were waiting for the transport to arrive, the two ‘locals’ (Red Alert was shocked to be addressed as such) did their best to repair the crashlanded scientist and the cybercat medic. They weren’t exactly successful, but at least Glit could move three out of four limbs and they could ease Skyfire’ pain as the acid in his frame was being processed.  
Glit was eager to see the predacon Inferno mentioned to him, especially because he had read Rossum’s thesis and wanted to see the dragonhorse. He was amazed at how tame he was, and when he heard of the traditional method the locals had been treating chronic cybercrosis, he was in pure awe. But he had confirmed that medics had tried energon purifier in a similar way, but it only provided a brief suppression of symptoms. Still, it would have bought them time. And time was, in this period of the vorn, exactly what they needed.  
Red Alert constantly kept an optic on the two, slowly recovering guests, which Skyfire mistranslated as care and worry. In return, he completely failed to notice the security mech’s true status.  
“You are also stuck here for the monsoon, aren’t you?” he asked while Red Alert was working on his broken secondary energon pump.  
“Well, in a way, yes” Red Alert replied. “If it wasn’t for the early onset, I might be in Praxus now. I’m not sure I would permanently stay there, though Inferno doesn’t want to let me go.”  
Skyfire laughed.  
“I understand, he clearly has a crush on you. He might not even let you leave when the rain stops.”  
“You can’t imagine how many times we have talked this through. I am a security expert, and I utilize only a small fragment of my abilities now. But as long as I’m useful here, he won’t mind, so I won’t mind either. It’s that simple.”  
“You have a very strange dynamic” Skyfire observed. “But he seems a nice mech. Odd, but nice.”  
“That he is” Red Alert looked up from soldering the broken metal together. “There. Do you think I can start re-routing your energon here?”  
“You should wait until the metal cools down a little. You have some medical programming, right? But you have never been properly trained to be a medic.”  
“Security includes being able to patch up physical damage” he replied. “I hear you’ve been in a research on Paradron? I’ve been there once, I wish I could go back someday.”  
“It is a charming place” Skyfire nodded. “If you have travelled so far, how did you end up here around the equator?”  
“My latest owner sold me to peripatetic auctioneers” Red Alert replied. He was shocked to hear himself talking so calmly about the past. “In Polyhex. I was with them for three and a half quartexes before Inferno bought me.”  
“He bought you?” Skyfire stared, wary and alert at once. Was he stranded in a slavekeeper’s house?  
“I was his last chance before his farm would have gone bankrupt. I think we complete each other very well.”  
Skyfire gaped.   
“Why, are you Vosians so individual that you can’t even process inter-dependence?” Red Alert asked as he noted the shuttleformer’s frown.  
“No, I can. But when we bond, it’s always based on mutual consent. I’m sorry to hear that it doesn’t go the same way here.”  
“Those bonds are very fragile” Red Alert pointed out. “When somebot doesn’t need the other anymore, he will simply turn his back on him. My slavery gives me stability, gives me value. By the way I’m not even sure I would manage without a master.”  
“Isn’t that what your programming forces you to think? It would keep you from planning an escape if you don’t believe in a future afterwards.”  
Red Alert considered it. The idea really made sense, from an outsider’s point of view.  
“There are examples of the other extreme. But I have also seen slaves starving to stasis after their masters’ death. You know, some make it through the worst of loneliness, some don’t. Some would very simply integrate into society, even to the point where they continue their owner’s business and such. Inferno told me to look after Horsepower if anything would come to him, and I would, out of loyalty. But I know I would never be as happy as I am with him.”  
The shuttleformer processed his words in silence. “This sounds more like an addiction, rather than true happiness” he finally said. 

.

“That was odd” Red Alert commented later, when Inferno returned from Horsepower’s stall. “The shuttle-bot thought I was some stranger, taking shelter here” he laughed.  
“And? Isn’t that so?” the farm-owner asked.  
“You don’t get it? He was under the impression I was a free mech.”  
Inferno scrutinized the white and red city-mech in front of him, and compared the results to the mental image of how he had once looked like in the auctioneers’ tent.   
“I thought you would find it funny.” Red Alert sounded to be somewhat disappointed. Certainly, some of his former owners would have beaten him to scrap if his behavior would have failed to make hierarchy obvious. Inferno merely smiled.  
“This gave me an idea” he finally said. His tone was full of pride, though. “Maybe we should work more on the appearances, somewhat like Sparkle and Nightfall.”  
“Who?”  
“You’ve never read ‘Nightfall’s last Sparkle’? It was a three-times bestseller, and you never got your hand on it?” the farm-mech said. “How can somebot be literate, and live without reading it?”  
Now it was Red Alert’s turn to gape.   
“I have not read for my own pleasure for a while” he admitted. In fact he hadn’t had much urge to read when every book reminded him of those joors he had spent in Metroplex’s library. He remembered how the city-former would hold him in an internal servo’s comfortable hug, with his sensitive helm against the living wall of his protector and protégé.   
Primus, he’d missed him so much. He didn’t have the faintest idea where Metroplex had disappeared. All he knew was that he had an emergency warping system that would teleport him to a random place if it deemed necessary for the titan’s survival. Red Alert had very carefully set the random coordinate generator to make sure not even he would be able to track down the city-bot. Without such precaution he would have been the weak spot of the titan’s defense system.   
He still was, in a way. He could have been held hostage and Metroplex could have been blackmailed if anyone would have found out the depth of their connection. But with so many owners after him, the chances of this were minimal.  
“Well, I can’t let you to not read ‘Nightfall’s last Sparkle’, the entire village would laugh and ask what you’d been doing in the entire monsoon season” Inferno decided. “But the scene I was referring to was when the Troopers spot a disguised Sparkle and they are sure he would lead them to Nightfall, and to confuse them, Sparkle starts acting as if he and Nightfall were mortal enemies. Of course Nightfall understands what he is doing, although he can’t fathom the reason why. Eventually the Troopers are convinced that they’d been following the wrong mech, and the duo can.... no, sorry, I won’t spoil the entire book for you.”  
“Inferno, please?”  
The red mechanism sighed.  
“Let’s call this a reverse self-defense training. You pretend to be angry with me, and if you’re plausible enough, I will tell you the story. Deal?”  
“Deal” Red Alert replied in an icy tone. Without the context, anybot would have believed he was making decisions of whom to murder, by which method. “I have your word.”  
“Creepy” Inferno nodded.  
“I can imagine” Red Alert laughed, back to his normal voice. “But what would be the signal for me to stop?”  
“What signal?”  
“A stop-word” Red Alert nodded after checking, with all his sensors available, that both guests were in medical stasis. “You may tell me to quit acting, or cease punching you, but I won’t do so until you say that certain word. What may that be?”  
“Let me think about it.”  
“I won’t!” Red Alert hissed menacingly. Then he busted out in stress-releasing laughter. “OK, I admit I really need more practice. I keep falling out of character.”  
He put on the act of being angry with the beloved master, but he craved his reassurance after every line. He threw tirades of insult, and after each cynical remark, he apologized to Inferno. The red mech, very patiently, told him to try again and again. Eventually, Red Alert slapped him in the nose, and marched out from the mansion, slamming the door behind himself. Then he hurried back because the monsoon was at its worst and the rainwater was floading the yard.   
“Good” Inferno whispered. “Do you think it was enough practice for today?”  
“You mean I can love you again?” Red Alert asked, and after Inferno’s approving nod, he jumped into his master’s arms. After all the stress of faked growls, insults and glowers, Inferno’s closeness was an invaluable relief. The larger mech held him close, massaged his sensitive helm, then led him to his room downstairs.  
When Red Alert had seen this place for the first time, he could not even see through the window because of the dirt on it. Now the rain had washed all that dirt away, and drummed its monotone rhythm on the transparent surface.  
Inferno sat down on his berth, and took out a reader device from under the energy pulsers.   
“If anybot calls this the best novel on the southern hemisphere, you might as simply believe them” he said, offering the small machine to Red Alert. “There are other, lighter stories from the author, but he says he could not yet bring himself to write the sequel he has in mind for this. Are you sure you want me to spoil it for you first?”  
“Yes, Inferno.”  
The rain was drumming on the window as usual, the outer lights were dim and barely visible against the much brighter lamps’ light in the small room. The guests were both in recharge upstairs, and not even Red Alert could pick up more life signs from them than their strong energy readings. The red and the white mechs on the berth sat so close to each other that their sides touched, and Inferno rested his arm in Red Alert’s neck who leant against him, the beautiful helm was mirrored in the larger robot’s abdominal glass.  
“Imagine the deepest of deep space. Halfway between Cybertron and a distant and lush alien world, a damaged spaceship is floating with only one survivor on board: a tiny golden recordicon: a flightframe, of the bat type. But even he is wounded: among other damage, most of his memory banks are gone. He remembers who sent him to Cybertron in a hurry, and why the ship has been attacked, but he has no recollection of what the message was and who were the so-called Troopers who murdered the crew just to get to him. Now, this ship is found by a callous mercenary called Nightfall, who repaired the little data receptacle in hopes of getting the information the Troopers were after. Until their mutual enemy spotted the duo for the first time, Sparkle considered Nightfall a brutish murderer, but after finding themselves on the same side, they slowly soften up to each other. Nightfall has somebot to care about, and admits to have become a better person for the little one. Sparkle realizes that the world is not black and white, and he admits that there is about as much selfishness in him as much selflessness is in Nightfall.”  
“Do they manage to salvage the information?”  
“No. Sparkle finds out that the data was regarding the cure of Gold Plastic Syndrome, but it is lost along the rest of his memories. It would be an obvious guess that Sparkle got involved in the research because off his own golden shade, but then they discover how his plates are actually the other extreme: he is nigh unbreakable. At this point, they both realize that the scientists must have found the cure for GPS and this was what Sparkle was carrying. However, the Troopers find them again. I already told you this part, it’s one of my favorite episodes. Eventually, Nightfall realizes that if he was to keep Sparkle for himself, as friend, company, and documentarist of his victories, it would be the death sentence for all those suffering from Gold Plastic Syndrome. In which case, he would have learnt nothing from the tiny golden mech. So, for maybe the first time in his functioning, he does the selfless act and delivers Sparkle back to the scientists in the hopes that they would be able to restore the data.”  
“By your wording I suppose they didn’t succeed, either.”  
“There was no need. You will read the novel, and you will find the answer why.”  
“Do you want me to start with the last page?” Red Alert harrumped.   
“Or you may guess. I told you the mid-story hint” Inferno winked.  
“What? You didn’t. Wait! You said Sparkle was carrying the cure. But does that suppose he necessarily carried it as data he stored?”  
Inferno smiled, and said nothing. Red Alert was on the right track.  
“He was golden, but resistant. And carrying the cure. Hey! I got it!” he cried out happily. “He was carrying the antidote in his own armor! Right?”  
“Now you can read the book, starting from the first page” the farm-owner replied. He placed the reader in Red Alert’s palm, and released him from his hug. “I will be out on patrol.”  
Hesitantly, the security mech closed his fingers on the device, and looked up at the door that Inferno had politely closed behind himself after he had left. He really wasn’t sure if reading the book wouldn’t be some type of cheating Metroplex’s library. Also, he felt some similarity between the plot and his current situation with the farm-mech.   
The rain kept drumming on the window, only the intensity of the daylight had dropped lower and lower. There was no leaving this farm, regardless of how he felt. Finally, he activated the reader in his palm.  
Later he couldn’t remember when his master returned to the room. Inferno might have asked if he should leave the lights on, but his words didn’t register to Red Alert. At some point, his master told him not to laugh or scream that loud when he was trying to recharge. He remembered being told that there was a reading-lamp in his own room too, and he was so obedient that he eventually paused reading while he went upstairs. There he could yell ‘Scrapheap!’ ‘Hahh, tricky!’ ‘Slaglet Troopers!’ ‘Hah! He says ‘slightly impossible history’ when he knows it’s the pure truth!’ ‘Nooo, how could he?’ or ‘Served him well! Right move, Sparkle!’ as loud as he wished.   
Inferno found him in sleep mode in the morning, with the offed device still in his hand.   
His next-door neighbor Glit told their host that he couldn’t properly recharge with him reading ‘Nightfall’s Sparkle’. To this, the seemingly offline security mech replied that the title was ‘Nightfall’s LAST Sparkle’, as letting go is the main theme of the story and there’s a deep emphasis on how Nightfall will never again have a similar chance for a normal life.   
“Fanatism starts here” Skyfire noted. Then he politely asked if he could borrow the book since Red Alert had finished with it.   
So, during the daytime, Glit couldn’t catch up with his sleep either, because of his other neighbor rumbling and giggling at the same story. 

.

The rain kept falling. The villagers were running short of fuel, and the lack of outdoor activities left its mark on everybot. Quote lamented to Red Alert that his master turned into a boring bookworm, reading about space bridge techology as if he would ever get the chance to build one in the backyard. He also mentioned how much he had missed his brothers, whom he couldn’t visit in the horrible weather. Cliffjumper was listening to radio broadcasts from the polities at war, and Best often suggested that they should go and assist the law enforcers. Sideswipe and Ever spent most of their orns constructing and detailing the frame of the newspark. They sent visuals of his first transformation, his first encounter with a mirror, and the first time he tested his speech programming. The whole village was in awe for a while. Shine and Click had become fast friends, although the older mech still wasn’t astonished by the other’s profession. But Shine’s nascent kindness helped them break the ice, and soon they had many other topics to discuss.  
When the monsoon eased and the clouds became thinner, a team of carrier-size Vosians arrived to take their wounded home. They were lead by no less than the Winglord of Vos, a pure-white, fire-red and royal-blue Seeker by the designation Starscream.  
Inferno helped Skyfire down the ramp, and watched as the newcomers attached a heavy-duty harness on him. Glit was also out in the rain with them, making sure that the chain-links would not tangle around the shuttle’s mistransformed parts, and they wouldn’t break off a damaged kibble. When the transport was ready and they all said their sparkfelt goodbyes, Starscream called Inferno and Red Alert aside. The farm-mech suggested they went back to the mansion, and soon the three of them were standing in the main room of the building.  
Red Alert immediately noted how much his master didn’t trust the newcomer. They had been very polite, mutually respectful, but the city-mech could see that was an act from both sides. He kept all his sensors on the Vosian prince, and only indulged in the superficial discussion when he was directly addressed.  
“No, sir” he replied. “I don’t think we were heroes. Helping each other out is a local rule we keep. Even if that means losing a drone to the acid.”  
“I got complete refund of the tractor drone” Inferno reminded him.   
“And more” Starscream added. “And I also have a very special offer for you.”  
“I’m listening” Inferno said.   
The sound of activating engines suppressed everything else as the carriers hauled Skyfire off the ground. In a hundred astrosecond or less, the aerial convoy was out of sight.   
“So, what may that special offer be?” Red Alert asked.  
“You” Starscream said simply. “I’m offering one point two million shanix for the mech who picked up Glit’s signal in heavy downpour. I am aware of your health issues. What do you say?”  
“I?”  
“By the traditions of Vos, the mech in question has the final say in the matter, regardless of your social status here” Starscream explained. “If you agree to come with us, you will get a flight upgrade and a full processor workout. You will leave Inferno a rich mech. What is your decision?”  
Red Alert’s processor was overwhelmed. He could leave the rural still for Vos. He would become a flier. His processor would be repaired and upgraded so that no glitch would ever affect him.   
He would, legally, become a free mech. An employee of the Winglord himself. Some of his former masters would scrape and bow before him, including the last one, whose cruelty had left him in such miserable state.   
But then, he looked at Inferno. He understood the situation quite well, and knew that his master had very little say in this matter. Not when the offer was for one million two hundred thousand shanix.   
“He’s not for sale” the red farmer managed nevertheless. His whisper was suppressed by the volume of the rain and the one point two million shanix at hand. Unbearable temptation.  
“Do you remember when we first saw each other?” Red Alert whispered back.   
Of course, Inferno remembered. Bulkhead dragged him to the traders’ camp because he is a good judge of character.   
With this one, shy question, Red Alert had made his own opinion clear to him. So clear that Inferno couldn’t have decided otherwise.  
“I’m not selling him, and that’s final” the farm-mech stated. Not because he didn’t want the one point two million, but because Red Alert had trusted his judgement about the Seeker. And since they both agreed that the Winglord wasn’t as trustworthy as he wanted to seem to be, he was not going to place Red Alert under his command. Especially not when it meant tampering with his brain module again. If one mnemosurgeon failed, what was the guarantee the next one wouldn’t make his condition even worse?   
“You are throwing away a fortune!” the Seeker screamed. So maybe that was where he had got his name from.  
“I know” Inferno replied in a stern but quiet manner. “My decision is final. Have you heard the news? Tesarus fell. In a polity this close to the war zone, one might consider his own safety much more important than shanixes that won’t protect him. Sir, I am no fool. Tagan provided forty percent of industrial production before the war, and now two cities that had been our rivals before, had fallen. Small farms like mine make the energon that powers almost half of this planet. If I wanted to move to a city, I would have done that already, and I would be regretting that decision in every astrosecond. Maybe then I would be considering your offer, sir. Now, as long as I have something valuable to lose, I’m not letting go of my security expert.”  
“One point four million.”  
“No.”  
“One point six. You could own all this big wet rock and have it protected by any security companies.”  
“No security company is worth Red Alert, and you know this. I’m not changing my mind.”  
Eventually, Starscream had left. ‘I will be in touch’ were his last words before he transformed and took off, flying after Skyfire, Glit and those carriers whose name the locals weren’t even told.   
“Thank you, master” Red Alert grabbed him when he was sure to be out of the Seeker Winglord’s hearing range.   
“He is a very dangerous mech” Inferno replied. “Sheer egoism. No wonder you didn’t want to confront him yourself.”   
“Was it that obvious?” Red Alert asked. Actually, he had his weapons ready in case Starscream wanted to take him by force.  
“To me it was, but we understand each other from half sentences” he said. “I’m worried about Skyfire. I hope he won’t suffer another telemetry failure....”  
“Do you think the Vosians won’t repair him properly?”  
“As long as he doesn’t believe in himself, they can repair him as much as they would like” Inferno replied. “But we have done our part, and that’s what matters. Taking care of those who need it. And let us not forget that Starscream brought this.”  
With that, Inferno took a tiny translucent cube from the table. From one angle, it looked like pure sun-energon, but from the other, it was empty. He didn’t know what exactly was inside the cube, only, that Starscream took it from a science-obsessed senator’s vault and left it with instructions that he could add it to virtually any material to make normal, untainted energon in just a klik’s time. Definitely not the purifier he’d been eyeing with, it could have been something better.... or something worse.  
“Are you going to use that?”  
“Like I had a choice” Inferno replied.   
Red Alert followed him to the cellar where the farm-owner had kept the Hummingsong’s gel, and added a small portion of the odd material to a barrel full with the white jelly.   
In the first few astroseconds, they could only see a drop of bright pink color. Then its glow intensified like when low-grade caught fire, and it kept giving off an intense purplish light. Inferno filled a nearby glass with this whatever, and turned it towards the lamp. When he considered it truly looked like energon, he dipped a finger in it.   
It was slightly purplish, rather than pink, but otherwise it looked like energon. Not the tasty sun-made fuel Horsepower would have needed, but Inferno decided it was worth a try. 

.

The first beams of light were shining through the gloomy sky over Stormy Range. The rain was still falling, but that was a mild shower compared to the monsoon. Inferno called it ‘vapor’. Then, after just two more orns of semi-darkness, the clouds vanished from the sky.  
The farmers had a lot to do. When the acid wasn’t falling from the sky anymore, they had to detach the covering sheets from the shackles. They lifted the solar panels up to the sky again, the thick poles holding them as if nothing had happened since they were last used. Inferno explained that the large squares first have to power up themselves, and he also had to spray out a glue that cannot be applied while edible energon was in the making.   
“You keep a lot of dangerous materials around here” Red Alert noted.  
“Hey, mycopropelene is what will keep the new layers of lotion on the panels” Inferno explained. “Without this, the acid would have washed off the protectives. What else could I use? It’s quite safe, as long as it will not come in contact with living metal.”  
“According to the label, it’s a horrible vesicant” Red Alert pointed out.   
“Let us hope that no mad warlord will ever go to a garden center” Inferno replied. One quick look at the security-mech warned him of an oncoming breakdown. Either he applied some distraction while he still could, or the mech would celebrate the first sunny day with a complete glitchout.   
“Let’s get these two more rows up in the air, and I will spike the spark out of you. Deal?”  
Oh? Deal!  
“And may I return the favor at the same time?”  
Inferno replied with a purr that very much resembled Red Alert’s. In that long time they had spent locked up together, they worked out a pose in which this was quite possible to do. Inferno’s engines hummed with anticipation, but the farmwork came first. They had to set all the sheets aside, to let them dry before they would be packed away. Red Alert had to check the sprayer drone (and he’d done that no less than five times) to make sure mycopropelene wouldn’t seep out of its holder. Then Inferno grabbed the drone’s steering port, and drove away to spray the glue over the solar panels before actual production would start. He had carefully avoided the three rows where Horsepower’s spark-rinsing energon was already in production. He would later switch these off and reactivate them after two orns. That little production would be just enough for Horsepower in the meantime. The two of them had to run on preserved energon until the rest of the farm was producing again, but the beast couldn’t wait.   
Inferno had, rarely, praised the unnamed nectar they got from Starscream. He wasn’t sure if Horsey would have been still functional without it. The freshly-generated energon was almost as good as sun-powered fuel, although the predacon seemed to weaken by every orn. At least the progress wasn’t that fast as it used to be.  
Red Alert remembered the first time they applied sun-made energon on the sick beast’s spark after the monsoon. Unlike his habit of waiting for them at the equerry so close to Sideswipe’s farm, he came directly to the shed where the barrels were stored, and he swung his tail happily as he trotted away after the treatment. Despite his age, he seemed just as playful as a foal.   
As they were waiting for the mycopropelene to dry, Inferno grabbed Red Alert by the back kibble, and carried him just outside the shed, so that they would bask in the sunlight and the fresh air after all those quartexes.   
“So let’s see if this feels just as good outside, as it’s perfect in an actual berth!”  
“It will be better!” Red Alert assured him. At least Inferno didn’t seem to be a prudish. And why should he be? Even if the city-bot wasn’t his Certain Special Someone, he was going to stay with him for the foreseeable future. Perhaps, like Horsepower, till the end of his functioning. Red Alert was sure that the speech Inferno made to Starscream was improvised, but at the same time, his points were rather clear. He truly intended to keep him, unless the specialist demanded otherwise.   
It felt good to be certain about his future. As Red Alert positioned himself on the lying Inferno’s hip panel, backwards so that the larger mech’s spike wouldn’t hurt him but grant an incredible amount of pleasure, he started to think about an entire life by his current master’s side. This was even better than the sweet sensation in his valve. It was astonishing to know that he would probably stay here forever.   
As his size-adaptation ability reached its highest capacity, he leant forward, resting his chest plates between sturdy red shins, and bringing his own spike cover in contact with Inferno’s valve panels. Soon they doubled their incredible sensation, although their brain modules could no longer process all the incoming data. They have perfectly completed each other.  
There was a moment, though, when Inferno suddenly went tense and stopped his quiet, encouraging moans. Red Alert immediately detected this, so he had increased the amplitude of his own movements, trying hard to distract his master. But what was wrong? Now that he was paying attention too, he picked up a radio signal. There was a private discussion going on between Inferno and his upper neighbor.  
But why did Bulkhead have to ping the red mech right now, when this could have been his happiest moment in five thousand vorns? He guessed his master replied ‘not now, Bulkhead’ but even afterwards, he couldn’t regain his focus. Something was wrong. Everything else was perfect, the two of them, the weather, Horsepower, from this angle he could even see the pristine sky above the Rust Sea and the great industrial buildings in Tagan capital. Everything was fine, as far as he could tell.   
In other words, there was something horrible and he couldn’t even detect it. This realization killed his mood, too. But whatever was amiss, Red Alert was determined to help his master through it, and provide what was the best for him. And whatever the bad news was, it could wait.   
He only asked after a breem, when they were done with the more pleasurable activity.   
“I won’t pretend to have not picked up the radio signal” he stated. “And I won’t pretend to ignore how you reacted. Do I have the right to know?”  
Inferno nodded, but didn’t say a word.   
“Is something wrong with Bulkhead?”  
“With Quote.”  
“Why? He completely forgot how to transform, or what?”  
To his ultimate surprise, Inferno nodded again.   
“And that’s not all. Cliffjumper had said that he thought they were over with all those quarrels with Best. Yet, Best had also refused to transform when the monsoon was over.”  
OK. This was really bad news.  
“And Ever?” Red Alert asked. If it had been a fault of manufacture, it had to affect all three of them.  
“I don’t yet know. I told Bulkhead to rule out the worst possibility, he will ping me when he’s done.”  
“And what is the worst possibility?” Red Alert asked. Would the three transport-mechs need to have their transformation cogs changed? Would they need a complete frame remold?   
Before Inferno could have answered, Bulkhead pinged them. His voice was that of a broken, shattered mech. One who had just lost all hope and his faith in the justice of existance.  
The good news was that Ever had been able to, with some outer help, transform. He was in the best shape of the trio, but not unaffected.  
The bad news was that the three-split twins, despite their young age, were all suffering from cybercrosis. Acute or perhaps peracute form of the disease, Bulkhead added.  
For the next few breems, Inferno was holding a teleconference with six shattered mechs: Best, Quote, Ever, Bulkhead, Cliffjumper, and Sideswipe. He explained, detail by detail, how could one slow down the progress of the disease, and reminded that the monsoon period was over so the life qualities of the transport mechs would probably not turn worse if they all kept his instructions. He also offered to try adding the unnamed nectar to already energized sun-energon, to see if it had a better effect on the young mechs. He hoped it might help them more than it had the old dragonhorse.  
But he wasn’t fooling anybot, not even himself. Horsepower had an exceptionally strong spark. Best, Quote and Ever were three mechs sharing the same spark’s divided energy, and their individual sparks were so weak they couldn’t even power up their entire frames anymore. Most likely, splitting their one spark in three had already predisposed them to the illness. Being separated for this long had also strained their bond. As he thought back, Inferno noted that Quote had even mentioned this! Why didn’t he listen to what he was saying? Why didn’t any of them notice what was so horribly wrong until now?  
It was a matter of breems before the entire village was aware of their sickness. Some did their best to encourage the affected, others expressed their sympathy and condolescence. Many told the owners to inform the auctioneers immediately, or else they wouldn’t get their money back. A loud minority exclaimed that if the sellers would dare show up in the village again, they would be torn to screws and plates. As Shine pointed out, that aggression wouldn’t have helped anyone. Instead, he organized volunteer work on Cliffjumper’s and Bulkhead’s farms, as their slaves could not assist them with the seasonal work.   
The unnamed material didn’t react well with any type of energon, it went seething and purple and Inferno didn’t risk bringing it in contact with Horsepower’s spark. He feared it would have damaged his spark, and was certain that the three weakening twin-sparks would have reacted even more badly. But other methods didn’t help much, either.  
Ever was the first who became deaf, but Quote couldn’t hear well either. Best lost control of his limbs, while the other two still managed to ambulate somehow. Ever encouraged his brothers to keep trying to transform, and also encouraged their owners to help them, as he was still able to roll in his transporter mode and transform with some outer help. While the volunteers were working on the other two farms to replace the slaves’ work, he asked for similar assistance so that his master had time and capacity to write the sparkling’s programming. They had both spent joors working on detailing Sunsteaker’s hand, especially the articulation of his fingers. The gold-shining youngster already displayed an unexpected knack for art, and especially, painting. Ever secretly hoped to see his first exhibition, although rationally he knew that he wouldn’t live that long. Their conditions rapidly declined.  
Cog and Wheel arrived one day. They expressed their disappointment and condolences, and swiftly told the angry villagers that they weren’t happy about this situation either.   
“Do you think it’s good for us that we have to take back the product we just sold? Sir, it is our living to sell them, and to leave happy customers behind, do you think it’s in our interest that they die of cybercrosis half a vorn after they were sold?”  
“They are not ‘products’, blackie” Bulkhead shouted back. “I bought Quote to be my cohort. And there’s Sideswipe’s family! As you look at Ever, playing with Sunstreaker, can you label him as ‘product’ and nothing more?”  
The crowd agreed with him. Wheel said something like ‘Come on, they are just slaves’ but his words were only picked up by Red Alert who was keeping all sensors on them. He pinged the trader, and warned him not to repeat that line if he wanted to live long.  
Wheel looked around to find the source of the threatening message, and was surprised to see the instabile freakout in the loudest middle of the mob.   
“Hey, Cog, look. There’s the glitchy.” Red Alert pinged them again, asking if he had broken a bet. Before they could have replied, however, Sideswipe stood up.   
“You say taking them back? Sirs, they are not malfunctioning. They are dying. It’s not a condition that can be repaired.”  
“The manufacturer will only give us a refund if we deliver them back to the factory. I’m sorry, sirs, that is how it goes.”  
“THAT IS HOW IT GOES?” the normally moderate Bulkhead echoed. “What you’re talking about would be murder! My Quote would be slaughtered for scavengable spare parts?! That’s not going to happen!”  
The mob thundered in agreement. Red Alert was certain that these two mechs would very soon end up a lynched pile of debris, and the sole reason his processor didn’t glitch out was that he shared the views of the villagers. Then, suddenly, everybot went silent as Cliffjumper rose to speak  
“Listen, you sparkless idiots!” he started. “As you may not know, but everyone in New Argent does, I didn’t have a smooth start with Best. What ‘not smooth’? I DID consider selling him for spare parts at a point. But do you know why was that? Because of his personality. Because he is a person, that is why, and his life is mine! I won’t pretend to have many shanix to let go, not anymore, but as long as these are the choices, I’d rather not give him back. Do I waste five hundred barkers? You decide. But I would rather let Best die peacefully in his own berth, and I will have his frame melted down in Simfurian fashion, between the rocks where he had punched me in the face for the first but not last time! He is a living mechanism, and for that little time he has, I won’t make him feel abandoned, and I am definitely not willing to throw him away like a useless tool!”  
Suddenly, the angered villagers went silent. They all knew how the early monsoon destroyed most of Cliffjumper’s most expensive crops, and turning down the return of the very high buying price must have been a real sacrifice from him.  
But, to everybot’s surprise, Ever rose to speak. As the other two were unable to transform, he was the only of the three who came to the meeting.  
“I apologize for my late reaction” he started. Although they knew he wouldn’t hear them, the villagers loudly ensured him that there was nothing for him to apologize. “I thank for everybot’s support, but unlike my brothers, I don’t have a choice. There is a young spark in the cohort I’m proud to have belonged to, and I would only endanger Sunny if I stayed with my master. I have to go.”  
About four or five villagers immediately offered to take him in, useless and sick, but with a very brave spark. Ever turned these offers down. “And why would that be good for anyone?” he bitterly asked.   
Sideswipe held his sturdy, ponderously moving arm with both hands, and those who watched closely could see a hardline connection between their wrists. The two mechs were arguing – not against, but for each other. Eventually, Sideswipe put his right palm on Ever’s forehead in a gesture of goodbye.   
“Well, if Ever is going, he cannot go alone” Bulkhead quietly said. “They are twins, if one spark goes out, the others will doubtlessly follow.” He felt horribly for having made such decision, but along with Quote’s hearing, gone was his radio reception. He had to decide for him without listening to his opinion, and he knew Quote’s attachment to his brothers.  
“Are you certain?” Cliffjumper asked. “I want to keep Best as long as I can, but if I can’t.... I know he will want to be taken with the two others.”  
“And we will be by their side till their last moments” Bulkhead replied. “I hate making decisions for anybot, but I know what peracute cybercrosis is like. With such weak sparks, they will be trapped in unresponding, empty frames in a matter of orns. I won’t let Quote reach that stage. I can’t. He is scared, and weak, and I don’t want to watch as he passes out when Ever is taken down. If he has to go offline this young, I want to at least save his dignity.”  
Cliffjumper nodded.  
“Then we are coming with you too.”

.

The Stormy Range was shining in the brightness of the early afternoon as the two black trucks rolled up to the farms. Sideswipe, Ever and Shine were coming along, because Ever wanted to say goodbye to the sparkling, and Shine because Sideswipe asked him to take care of the young one in his absence and comfort him as much as he could. It would be hard enough for him to accept the death of his big blue caretaker. With his current processor capacity, Sideswipe couldn’t tell how much he would understand, but he was certain that he won’t lie to the sparkling, especially not about Ever.   
As the black trucks climbed up to Cliffjumper’s rain-ruined farm, Inferno and Red Alert followed Bulkhead to Quote’s sick-berth.  
Quote was just a fading shadow of his former self. He could hardly move, he only communicated with his master through a reader device he always kept in his hand. Inferno had an impression that he didn’t want his neighbors to see him in this condition.   
However, when Bulkhead typed ‘they’re coming’ to the reader, the blue mech requested to have a word with Inferno in private. Red Alert asked if Bulkhead had high-grade in the house, as they all seemed to need it. With this excuse, he escorted the green mech out of the room.  
“Thank you for your faith in me, Inferno” Quote said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t live up to your expectations. You are a good friend, and I know you will be by my master’s side even when I won’t be present in his life anymore. I have a request, however.”  
Inferno nodded. Words failed him, and Quote couldn’t have heard anyway.   
“Make sure he gets back every shanix he paid. And don’t let him buy another transport mech on that money.”  
That would have been hard to do, but the request was quite understandable.  
“Instead” Quote continued, “help him make his dream come true. He wants to become a spacebridge specialist. My price won’t cover all the tuition fees, but now that you have Red Alert, whom I deeply respect and trust, you could buy half of this farm. He won’t have time to cultivate it, anyway.”  
Again, the red farm-mech nodded.  
“I don’t even remember how the lower parcels of our farm look like” Quote lamented. “By what little function my processor still has, I think the lower half would be easily accessed from your place. You won’t need to carry the energon around, and make a detour. You won’t need me as much as he did.”  
Inferno typed ‘we will manage that’. Then he wrote something about Bulkhead’s own processor, and continued the sentence with a name that meant nothing to the dying transport-mech. He understood the intention, however, and looked up at Inferno’s blue optics with hope.   
“Promise?” he asked.  
Inferno took his oath.   
Bulkhead and Red Alert returned with high-grade and four very clean glasses. They had just enough time to consume their fuel before the black trucks arrived. 

.

The two large farm-mechs supported Quote’s heavy frame to Wheel’s trailer. Sideswipe and Cliffjumper had already been there.  
Quote turned around to take a final look at the farm where he’d spent most of his life. He pleaded with Red Alert to take care of Bulkhead, which Red Alert promised to do. Quote also made sure he would see to Inferno keeping his own promise. He didn’t doubt the red farm-mech, he just desperately wanted to be certain that he if he had to die anyway, his master at least profited from it a little.  
As the convoy drove away, Inferno and Red Alert were left in the empty farmhouse. The larger mech held the white city-mech close to him, and mused about intertwining lives. He had risked so little money on the day when he had bought the glitchful, used and worn-out security specialist, and he had been honored with so much in return. Bulkhead and the two others had hoped to make an unfallable investment, although they knew this would be lives to be responsible for. He couldn’t blame their choices, those in the past and those in the present. In his opinion, there was no better choice. He knew they would grieve the three twins, not as lost property, but as friends who died so young. At least he had Red Alert, and for now, he had Horsepower too.   
“Come, city-mech. I need to call in a favor.”  
He transformed, and waited till Red Alert locked the farmhouse behind them.  
“What favor? Now?”  
“Yes, now. Quote’s last request was for me to make sure Bulkhead becomes a spacebridge specialist.”  
“Inferno. I’m sorry to argue, but I don’t think he has the processor capacity for that.”  
“He doesn’t” his master replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “That is why I will have to ask Rossum for an upgrade.”


	7. My death/Your death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter in which the public noncon is the most cheerful event? OK, the second most cheerful.... You’ve been warned of M-rate.

The dark gray, purple and red Decepticon general scrutinized his lost and found property’s dented red armor, his thoroughly confused optics, the stasis cuffs on his wrists, and nodded in hostile satisfaction.   
“I will need some privacy, now” he claimed in a quiet but commanding tone. “The Autobots have damaged some part of his slave coding while he was under the impression I was dead. That allowed him to run amok behind my back, but I’m confident it won’t take long to reactivate those lines.”  
The prisoner processed Turntide’s words. Every Autobot knew there was little truth in what Decepticons had to say. He filtered out the threatening undertone and turned the story around and suddenly, the smaller mech’s words made sense to him.   
The lower ranking Decepticons were eager to get out of the dreaded Turntide’s way. Some were trying to encourage one another to ask how he survived that horrible explosion, but the general ordered them to get out of sight and they hurried away from the duo.   
“Your wrist” Turntide barked. He removed the stasis cuffs and put them aside with a shade of proudness on his face. Then he grabbed the Autobot’s red hand, and plugged a datacord into the wrist panel. To an outsider, this might have looked as innocent as a handshake.  
The prisoner braced himself for whatever databurst that was about to come through. What Turntide sent him, however, was nothing but the most basic thing a master would give his property.   
A map.  
\-------------------  
Inferno was sitting in the middle of the solar field, resting his back against Horsepower’s abdominal panels. The haggard old beast was lying peacefully on his side, basking in the sun, sometimes turning his head upwards, staring questioningly at Bulkhead’s empty farm. His fragile red master couldn’t explain him where the green neighbor had disappeared, but his reassuring face told him that Bulkhead was doing fine and would probably return home someday. Earlier this quartex he had been shown a hologram of Rossum and Bulkhead together, and then Bulkhead had briefly returned to New Argent before he had disappeared again. During that quick visit, he had seemed.... different. Horsepower might have had understood “two orns from now” if he wouldn’t have been deaf, but he didn’t know the words “tuition” nor did he understand “Petrex Academy” or “Faculty of Paradimensional Travel and Communication”. All he knew was that Bulkhead had disappeared from New Argent the second time, and he doubted that he will see the mech again in his life.   
At least the new inhabitant, the white and red mech that was even more fragile than his own master, had appeared to stay. He had meant quite a lot to Inferno, and Horsepower was well aware that the two of them would maintain the farm together even after his imminent death.   
Apart from Bulkhead’s absence, he was comfortable with the future. He looked back at his master, who was sitting between his fore and hind legs, reading a newly purchased file. Inferno looked up from the novel, patted Horsepower on the shoulder, then offlined the device and turned his face to the bright sun. The dragonhorse dropped his head on the rock, and only his dorsal antenna’s movement indicated that he was not yet in recharge.   
Between the powerful predacon’s legs, between the many sharp talons, Inferno remembered the last orn Bulkhead had spent with them. In accordance with Quote’s last request, he had indeed bought the lower third of the green harvester’s farm. Who knew he would afford such investment half a vorn after purchasing Red Alert as a last, desperate attempt to save his own farm? He settled back to reading, but instead of reactivating the device in his hand, he recalled the moment when Red Alert had attacked him in the middle of New Argent’s main street, much to Bulkhead’s amusement and everyone else’s shock and surprise.  
It was a neat act, he had to admit. Generally speaking, every slave owner could make their property to scrape and bow to them in public. The opposite, however, took an insane amount of practice, patience, mutual trust and cooperation. And how great the reward had been! Not to mention the reaction of the onlookers.   
First, he had explained to Red Alert why he had wanted him to pretend anger or disgust or hatred. Then, they spent two quartexes practicing this in the privacy of the old farmhouse. He had intended to give the villagers a little show after the monsoon, but the tragedy of the three-split twins had obviously killed their mood. But he couldn’t let Bulkhead leave for Petrex without him seeing the show. Proving to have overcome a childhood fear was the (very pleasurable) top of it.  
In advance, he only told the villagers not to interfere with whatever they were about to see, because despite the appearances, he would be in perfect control of the situation. GranMac had laughed at him, and Mouser had pointed out that Red Alert was so protective he simply wouldn’t be able to harm his master, even if he had truly wanted to.   
Then, the delicate but unquestionably strong Red Alert stormed to the scene, growled a few improvised insults, and punched his master in the face. The two struggled, with Inferno constantly telling Red Alert to stop, but he completely ignored the commands and instead of standing down, he had tripped his master and continued to assault the mech who was now lying on his back on the street, begging for his slave to let him go. Some newcomers hurried to the scene, and only the other villagers could hold them back or else they would have rescued Inferno from the amok-running security mech.   
Red Alert had seemed determined to revenge every mistreatment he had suffered at the hands of his many-many masters. Although Inferno had yet to take any real damage, some onlookers were already worried about him, despite the warning before the attack. It just couldn’t be right when Red Alert had turned his master’s frame so that his back kibble was shamelessly pushed into the dirt and he had put Inferno’s valve cover on display before he manually pushed it aside.  
Inferno was begging for mercy, now, and only a quick wink to the onlookers betrayed his true emotions: equal amount of eagerness and pride, with double dose of arousal on top of them. He wanted them to see. He wanted Bulkhead to see, because he was going to travel away and perhaps he would not return for many vorns, and he wanted to let the good friend know that he had indeed overcame the old fear regarding his valve. Because if he had done this, then the green harvester was also supposed to face and overcome his own self-limitations and stop worrying about the academy and his doubts regarding Quote’s last will.   
His valve was wet, but not nearly as much as it would have been recommendable. Nevertheless, Red Alert’s spike entered him, intense movement making up for the relatively small equipment. Inferno’s miserable pleas sounded less and less plausible, even to those who hadn’t been there for the start of the show. Some threw unwelcome and prude comments, while others were quick to point out that there was no regulation that would have prevented a master-slave couple from interfacing in public. A few mechs loudly doubted that the permission included this unlikely situation, when the master was the receptive partner. If the owner happened to be a valve-mech, noone would have prohibited them from doing certain acts the other way around, of course. It was their own problem, to have a mistaken orientation. They were supposed to keep it private, and preferably, to do it in the back room where nobot would see.   
Only Bulkhead had known what level of victory this was for Inferno. Not the show, not the public part. He had never considered Inferno a sane mech, but nor was he shy, nor prude. Nor did he ever hide his opinion about anything, even if it was the exact opposite of the common (mis)conception. But getting a spike in his acid-burnt valve? Being exposed after such trauma in his early sparklinghood? No wonder he chose his most trusted security expert for the task.   
Of course, they both were obviously enjoying the act. Inferno was out of words halfway to his overload, but Red Alert kept cursing and throwing insults at him nevertheless. When Inferno could only moan and gasp, the city-mech had called him a shameful rusty scrap-pile and told him he wasn’t worthy of anything else but being used like a berth-toy. At this point, not one villager looked around and asked if anybot could see a berth involved.  
They overloaded together, in perfect sync. Inferno pretended to be broken and exhausted, while Red Alert was pulling his best at being still furious.  
“That’s all you are good for, hm? Master! Was that all?”  
“Leave me...” the larger mech replied in almost a whisper. “Just leave me alone.”  
Red Alert couldn’t help a moment of softness. He knew that, until the secret word, he would have to understand the exact opposite of what his master was saying. In this show, among the many faked emotions and made-up insults, Inferno had told him that he wanted him to never leave.   
He shook himself, and stood up, only to punch Inferno in the face again.   
“Say the F-word” Bulkhead whispered. “Say the F-word, Inf, or he will tear you apart.”  
Inferno looked at his neighbor, then nodded. He breathed one, quiet word, so softly that not even he could hear it.   
But Red Alert’s sensors, sharp-tuned and fine, had picked it up. The white mech had all but collapsed on his master, hugging him and being hugged, large, reassuring red arms holding his shaking frame, and they rubbed their helms together in the gesture of love and understanding, and his master whispered him praises and words of gratitude.   
“Whoa.”  
“So you have set ALL of this up?”  
“Now that was quite a stunt.”  
“Hooooot.”  
“It was good, yeah?”  
“I honestly thought he’d lost it.”  
“Did you never consider going professional? You would earn a fortune.”  
“You could have stopped him, if you really wanted to, right, Inferno? He is still weaker than you are.”  
“Incredible.”  
“How long did it take to teach this?”  
“Are you certain it was THAT good?”  
The duo took in the clamor, but were too busy with each other to react to any of it. Inferno was holding Red Alert with pride, and did his best to bring up the memory of the shivering poor mech who had glitched out at the sight of any unknown mech or at a careless half-sentence. The difference was his own work, his own pride. Who said Red Alert was a hopeless case?  
Inferno smiled at the memory. Yes, that was quite a show, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. They obviously wouldn’t be able to fool the villagers again, and it was nice of them that they had not rushed to his help when he had no need for it.   
And of course he was not going to sell Red Alert. It was so impossible that it was off scale.   
He glanced at the mansion, where Red Alert’s guest and former colleague was chatting with the security expert. He picked up their energy signatures, two content sparks, and he guessed that they had already lost count of the glasses of sun-energon they had consumed. Chromedome had arrived the orn before, after a call from Praxus in which Prowl had asked them to provide some ‘well-deserved and much-needed quiet’ to the mnemosurgeon. Prowl had also asked (well, technically, ordered, but it came through as a request since he wasn’t Red Alert’s owner anymore) that Red Alert didn’t ask about Pivot. The security expert then only asked back ‘Again?’ and gave his word that he would be tactful.   
Inferno decided it was not his place to ask questions. Chromedome must have lost someone or something to the war: as far as he knew, Praxus was not directly involved in the fighting, but it hadn’t been as isolated as the monsoon area had been, either. It was bad enough that Red Alert was on the edge when he heard about Helex and Tesarus falling to the uprising. The poor mech was afraid for his former masters, those not as lucky as Inferno to have a mansion in a secluded area like the Stormy Range. Of course the white and red mech was eager to have Chromedome under his protection.   
“Well, now Red Alert can be cautious for not just the two of us, but for one more” Inferno mused aloud. “Can’t he? This Chrome mech seems a little too loose, and it’s Red’s natural state to watch everybot’s back.”  
The old dragonhorse looked up, not like he had heard anything what Inferno said, but because he could see his master turning to him. He gave his red companion a long look, then dropped his head back to the sun-warmed rock and continued his beauty sleep.  
The red farm-mech reactivated the reader in his palm, and continued reading the long-awaited sequel to ‘Nightfall’s last Sparkle’. ‘Fallen heroes’ was a lot darker, somewhat more touching, and while its prequel went on letting go, this one focused on the acceptance of inevitable loss. Nightfall discovers the Vault of Power, a prison where a calculating politician stores powerful warriors in stasis lock, and the shocked mercenary frees one of his former rivals. An experiment goes horribly wrong in the research Sparkle was recording, and it leaves only him and a newbie scientist to continue their project. The two pairs, each desperate to prove their worth to Cybertron, meet on the abandoned space station that had seen the creation of GPS’s antidote in the former novel. The characters don’t even have time to introduce themselves when the Troopers attack them, and Sparkle discovers that their new golden armor is actually the reproduction of the antidote he was carrying in the former book, nigh indestructible, and available only because of Nightfall’s generosity. A shattered and infuriated Nightfall battles them.... and gets killed in a heroic sacrifice.   
“Well, now I get why he couldn’t write this for so long” Inferno admitted to himself. “I have never written as much as a love letter, but it must be a terrible feeling for a writer to kill off a character they created and made us love. Right, Horsepower?”  
He blinked at the dragonhorse, only to find that the beast had been staring up the hill, in the direction of Sideswipe’s farm.  
Inferno immediately knew something was wrong. But what could be, that he had not picked up, but the deaf old predacon had noticed? Or was he perhaps seeing things? As far as he could tell, the farm was empty because Sideswipe took Sunstreaker for an upgrade to be installed in the neighboring polity.   
Before he could have voiced his doubts, Horsepower stood up. Inferno found himself between four taloned legs and a heavy bulk of metal right above his helm.  
“What is it, Horsey?”  
Of course the predacon did not reply. For a moment, the farm owner doubted that his presence had registered to the beast at all, but when he tried to get away from under his loyal old dragonhorse, the large purple creature grabbed him by the back kibble and pulled him back to his former position under his belly.   
“Horsey!” Inferno shouted, although he wasn’t sure what he was expecting to happen. Why was the sick old beast acting like that? He couldn’t fathom.   
At a speed that was a haste for his age and condition, Horsepower marched to the steep hillside. Inferno had dropped the reader and the predacon didn’t even allow him to pick it up, rather, he urged his master to stay under his belly. There the old beast all but dropped, his weight trapping Inferno between the ununtrium armor and the stone.   
“Horsey!” Inferno screamed, and hit the beast’s superheavymetal plates with both fists in the vain hopes of getting his attention. When that didn’t work, he finally sent a distress signal to Red Alert.  
Just an astrosecond later, however, he picked up the tremors of the ground that Horsepower might have sensed much sooner. He also heard the rumble of jet engines, at least three different ones, and all of a sudden, the situation dawned on him. These were not tremors. Rather, it was bombing. And he was trapped under a clumsy, haggard dragonhorse while three Seekers diminished Sideswipe’s farm.... and moved on to his own fields.   
Then, there was a sudden flash of brightness and heat. Then darkness had claimed his mind, and his frame offlined.

.

Red Alert was chatting with Chromedome, eager to hear how his former fellows were doing under Prowl’s command. He was shocked to hear about the losses, and he’d realised just now how little he knew about the war that was ravaging the more populated areas of Cybertron.   
It wasn’t like he hadn’t done everything in his power to prepare his home for an attack. He had belonged to Inferno, and the red mech’s farm was the source of his income and the point of him being in Tagan polity. It was his duty to defend it, to never let it fall into Decepticon hands.  
“Why don’t you sign up for the Autobots?” Chromedome asked, pointing at his own red symbol.  
“Inferno considered it. In fact, it has occurred to both of us, but then it turned out that the new Prime is very much against slavery and we would have been separated from each other in no time” Red Alert explained. “Cliffjumper did, by the way. The topmost neighbor” he pointed at the now abandoned farmhouse. “He has first lost most of his farm, then his newly bought transporter mech, so he finally decided to quit and left to live off his frustration. After we figured out that we can’t sign up for the Autobots together, Inferno pledged his support to them in the form of one eights of the farm’s production, which is about twohundred cubes of unprocessed energon every orn. That’s all of our involvement.”   
“That’s very generous of him” the guest stated. He wanted to add a comment about Inferno’s supposed financial status, since he could afford a top-notch security expert to guard the energon farm, but then he remembered the discussion they had on the orn before.   
Red Alert’s new owner had welcomed him in a surprisingly hospitable manner, something the mnemosurgeon wasn’t really used to. Most mechs he’d met were overly cautious with him, afraid that he would hack their minds to find their valuables, then make them forget they ever had anything before he would rob them of their last shanix. Inferno had only told a joke about some energon trader, and that was it. Well, of course, the mech had Red Alert to interfere if he would have attempted anything like that.   
He was shocked to hear that the security mech had only cost twenty-two ‘barkers’, and was floored when he found out that a ‘barker’ had only meant one thousand shanix. Twenty-two thousand shanix for a mech like Red Alert? That was insanely cheap. Two hundred twenty thousand shanix, that would have been plausible, although still an insult to his expertise.  
“My glitch-outs have undermined my value” the white mech explained quietly.  
“You told me you were doing fine now” the Praxian reminded him with a slightly accusing undertone.  
“I am. It just.... wasn’t always so.” Almost instinctively, the white mech stepped closer to his new owner, who immediately threw an arm around him in a rather protective manner. It took the mnemosurgeon a moment to remember whose job was to defend the other, as it appeared to be quite the other way around.   
Now that they were alone in the mansion, Chromedome wasn’t shy to mention how odd his host’s behavior had appeared to him. Red Alert had agreed without hesitation, and added that regarding his gentleness, the farm-mech was on par with Metroplex. And that was saying something.  
“Considering how little access you have to global news, I suppose you haven’t heard that your most favorite master has replied to the Prime’s call.”  
“METROPLEX?”  
“He was in his usual mood – nobot could decide whether he was dangerously low on energon or was he simply numb after a long recharge period. Of what I have seen of him, he is doing well.”  
“Thank you, Chromedome. Do you think I could possibly have a word with him?”  
The Praxian considered.   
“Well, if you happen to be by the Prime’s side the next time he is summoned, it’s not impossible. But I hope you know how little a titan can see of a mech of our size.”  
“He doesn’t perceive much of us” Red Alert nodded. “I know. Without help, he can only pick up strong spark signatures like that of a Prime, or maybe a point one percenter if he watches closely....” In fact, that was why he had been given to Metroplex, so many vorns ago. To help his sensors out and to protect him from mechs too small for the titan to notice. He had very much hoped that nothing bad would be done to his master and responsibility, but hope in itself was quite a pathetic weapon.  
“You wanted to show me around on the mountain” Chromedome suddenly reminded him. “Come on, glitchy. Metroplex is doing well, no need for you to worry about him.”   
Before Red Alert transformed, he remembered his master’s comment about their guest, and smiled.   
Inferno had, just one breem after his arrival, labelled the mnemosurgeon as ‘helpful but irresponsible’. That was Chromedome in a sparkshell, indeed.   
Otherwise, the introduction went a lot smoother than Red Alert had hoped. Inferno very briefly commented that the next time the middlemech ‘forgets’ to pay the proper price for pure sun-energon, he would know whom to blame. Chromedome seemed to take the remark as sawdering instead of criticism over his trade. The evening was amiable, and the guest was greatly touched to receive his handmade drinking glass, even more, to hear the tradition behind it. But just when Red Alert was about to think this visit would go well, Chromedome asked how exactly he came in Inferno’s possession. The memory of that humiliation had sent him halfway to the Pit. At least his master didn’t tell about the stasis cuffs. Nor did he tell about how he had broken down many times an orn, nor about the other types of damage Turntide had caused to him. He had just held the smaller mech close, in that protective and reassuring hug, and Chromedome reacted as if he had never seen tenderness in his entire life.  
Or as if he couldn’t remember any tenderness in his entire life, Red Alert corrected himself.   
Ever since the mnemosurgeon’s arrival, which was almost an orn before, Red Alert was struggling with himself not to start asking what had happened to Pivot. His security programming had been urging him to investigate, while his slave coding reminded him of his promise to Prowl. His rational thinking, which had been tertiary, reminded him that he wouldn’t have gotten an answer even if he had asked.   
So, instead, he talked about his new home on the Stormy Range, and showed video footage of the less welcoming face of the now-sunny hillside. If he hadn’t seen it with his own sensors, he wouldn’t have believed that a flood of acid could wash a normal sized mechanism off his feet.   
“You’re lucky to live in such a secluded place” the visitor pointed out. “I just can’t imagine how the Decepticon army would try and conquer this area. The roads are steep and the gullies are too narrow for them.”  
“And you haven’t seen the traps I prepared, just in case” Red Alert nodded proudly. “I won’t tire you with the details, but if any ‘Con would pass the corridor from New Argent, they would die in agony a few orns afterwards, without a hope of recovery. I have set the alarm system so that only those with my or Road Police’s explicit permission can pass through.”  
Chromedome blinked at him, and noted how incredibly protective the glitchy robot had always been. His strong bond to the farm-mech who had now owned him had increased his determination.  
“Who had entrusted you with such deadly arsenal?” he inquired.  
“Three twins who are no longer alive” Red Alert whispered. “May they always be remembered.”  
“Friends of yours?” Chromedome asked with sympathy.  
“I felt as if they were my sparklings. I was already with the traders when they rolled out of the factory, and here we were sold to neighboring farmers. They died of peracute cybercrosis a few orns into the sunny season, only seven quartex old.”  
“Aw, I’m sorry.”  
“We all were” Red Alert nodded. “The villagers grieved them as their own, just like they would have grieved free-built mechs. Nobot cared about the difference.”  
For a few kliks, they were both driving in silence. Red Alert was running yet another analysis, wondering where else he could have enforced the border lines of New Argent’s territory. The cybercrotic energon was doubtlessly lethal in the concentration he had prepared it in the traps, but it had very little immediate effect. It would prevent the Decepticons from using the solar fields for their own army, but the villagers had to find some other ways to protect their own lives.   
He had been giving self-defense lessons to those interested, he had taught them how to use everyday objects as deadly weapons if needed. He had told all villagers to fill their glue-spraying drones with mycopropelene, because of its toxicity. When Mouser pointed out that the glue was a horrific vesicant, Red Alert had told him that they had better had it at hand and decide not to use it, than not have it and regret being unprepared.   
They were rolling near the panorama rocks just above the Rust Sea when Red Alert picked up the sound of explosions and Inferno’s distress call. Moments later he had also identified three Seekers attacking in perfect formation, one of them pure-white and fire-red with a royal-blue nosecone, the second one blue like the thunderous sky, the third one black with white and purple stripes.   
He had noticed too late that he left Seekers out of the calculation: as a grounder, he had forgotten to take their flight capability into account.  
Horsepower’s equerry had been bombed first. After a few random explosions, the silo and the sheds had been hit. Finally, in a deafening roar, the mansion went too.   
The shock had broken him, undone him, tore into the depth of his spark. He knew Inferno had no chance to have survived the attack. Not with this intense and accurate bombing.  
He had never lost a master before. He broke down, tearing up in hopeless pain and self-reproach. His coding had been telling him that he had failed in his task, fulminating until his entire processing system crashed. He had not even registered Chromedome dragging his spastic frame to the relative safety of a large rock’s cover.

.

“You are no fool, eh? Idiot rural glitchbot!” The arrogant laughter echoed around the burning hillside. “This is what happens to those who mock my generous offer!”  
Thundercracker transformed to land in the wreckage of Bulkhead’s home, and reported the lack of detectable life-signals. “It’s quiet as a tomb!”  
“It is all clear” Skywarp also reported from Sideswipe’s recharge-room’s remains. “Although it looks like nobody was at home anyway.”  
“I don’t care about collateral damage” Starscream stated. “These tiny, one-mech farms in the area have once provided forty percent of Cybertron’s energon production. Make sure that the Autobots are not getting reinforcement from here and let’s move on!”  
“Yes Screamer. Do you think we will meet some resistance there? ‘Cause this place was remarkably easy.”

.

Inferno rebooted after a few inglorious attempts, and damage reports hit him immediately. But what hurt more than the loss of his right leg and half of his back kibble, was the loss of two lives he had been responsible for. Three, he corrected himself. There was also a guest in the mansion.  
He struggled himself free from under molten ununtrium pieces. His beloved predacon’s armor plates had already started to decay after Horsepower took a direct hit from one of the Seekers, its radioactivity was jamming what little he had left of his sensory function. He struggled to his one foot, only to take in the sight of ultimate destruction.  
The entire farm was gone. The mansion, the sheds, the storages... Even the old washrack was nothing but a pool of leaking alcalizers. The solar panels had burnt out completely in the wake of a chain reaction.   
Around him, Horsepower’s metal was scattered about. The old beast had saved his master’s life when he had laid down on top of him, having shielded him from the explosions with his old, but still powerful frame. Inferno struggled to the darkened rock where the helm was, and he dropped to his one knee when he had reached the familiar, grayened metal. He threw both arms around the torn-off old pieces, and pushed his forehead to the facial plates of the deceased dragonhorse. With his entire world ruined around him, Inferno was holding on to the last familiar metal that remained.   
Sideswipe found him in this position almost an entire orn later, when he and Sunstreaker had returned from Tyrest after the sparkling’s first upgrade.   
\----------------  
After the file transfer, the, purple, gray and red mech pushed the stasis cuffs into the larger Autobot’s hands.  
“Hold these and follow me” he ordered in a familiarly cold voice.  
Inferno did as he had been told, processing the map file on the way. He had seen so many emotions in this deceptive mechanism’s oddly glowing red optics, and his spark was pulsing twice as fast as its normal capacity. He had no doubt about the gray one’s intentions, but he had to take the order and follow his lead for now. And wonder how he meant it when he promised to break them out of here.  
He was given the schematics of the Decepticon base, with all the automated defense system’s dead angles and the sensors’ weaknesses properly marked by a perfectionist. There were some escape routes marked in different colors, and a few ‘F?’ marks, with a number next to each.   
In the dead space of the Decepticons’ audiosensors, he muttered one such number to the smaller robot, who didn’t seem to have acknowledged. He marched to the prison area, and ordered the lower-ranking ‘Con to open Sunstreaker’s cell to him. Soon, the pair of stasis cuffs was clicked on elegant golden wrists.   
“And now, let’s see what else do we have” he grinned.  
“No less than the Autobot third in command, General Turntide.”   
“Good. My cute red Autobot here will hold the Sunny one, and every time Jazz fails to give me the answer I want to hear, I expect you to be creative. Inferno will not do more to him than hold him in position.”  
“Yes, sir.” The Decepticon was visibly cheerful for a moment. He couldn’t see the red Autobot sliding the stasis cuffs’ battery into Sunstreaker’s depowered rocker boosters. For all he knew, it was still in the central piece of the cuffs, keeping the frontliner from attacking his captors.   
Turntide looked at the Decepticon as he sent the drones to drag Jazz out of his cell, then they all moved on to the interrogation area. In the direction of the ‘F?’ mark Inferno had chosen on his way back.  
“I’m very satisfied with your level of security here” Turntide noted confidentially. The Decepticon thanked him.   
In just that very moment, Inferno stopped and whispered the F-word.  
“Finito.”  
Some Decepticons couldn’t even catch the moment of change. In one astrosecond, General Turntide had been one of them, in the next, he was an unleashed fury that fought with all his might to defend the Autobots, and Inferno in particular.   
Not that Inferno needed much of a protection at that moment. Living up to his name, he stormed through the lines of the drones and their commanders, while the Decepticons’ laser shots ricocheted from his heat-resistant armor. Next to them, Jazz was punching two enemies at a time, eager to return the beating he had received earlier. Sunstreaker’s rocket booster cleared their way to the hangar.  
“How shall I set the self-destruct?” the partly red robot asked as he offlined the last Decepticon standing.  
“Two kliks” Inferno decided. “We will need to drag all these Crappycons to the shuttles, or else they would be destroyed along with their base.”  
“Who cares about them?” Sunstreaker asked. “Let’s get going!”  
“I freed you, so I am in charge for now” the mech said. His gray and purple paintjob had been scratched during the fight, revealing the white metal under it.   
“I’m with Sunstreaker in this” Jazz pointed out. “Although it’s the ‘Con’s way of dealing with prisoners, personally I would prefer to not worry about them on the way home.”  
“From the specialist point of view, I agree with you two” the Decepticon impersonator replied while he rid himself of his purple insignia and the red visor. “But I suppose the rule of the turbofox and the rainy season applies here. Right, Inferno?”  
The larger red Autobot nodded, and threw both arms around the smaller robot. “I missed you so much, Red Alert. I thought you were killed in the mansion.”  
“And I thought you were killed in the equerry.”  
The two impatient ‘Bots urged them to get moving before the base would self-destruct under their feet.


	8. My boss / Your boss

“So you have been hacking the Decepticon communication channels with Turntide’s passcode since he was killed?” Jazz asked, his visor glowing curiously at Red Alert. Then he blinked at Optimus Prime whose office they had been seated in, wondering how much the Prime had formerly known of the security director’s doing. Of course, the saboteur knew Red Alert didn’t get his position for nothing. He was a perfectionist when it came to security because he knew how weaknesses could be exploited.

“Since I found out he was still using the same codes that I generated for him” Red Alert replied. “Way before his death. As I have been at fault for his safety once, I should be truly embarrassed at how careless he had been.”

“He is the one who should have been embarrassed for not listening to you” Inferno pointed out. “Underestimating you is never acceptable.”

Red Alert’s back kibble rubbed against Inferno’s in reply to the remark. He could always rely on his master for some comfort and reassurance.

That minimal-contact gesture didn’t go undetected. Jazz’s face expression read ‘No, not that, not here’ and Sunstreaker grimaced meaningfully. But it was Optimus Prime to voice his concern.

“Chromedome mentioned that your deactivated slave coding might come back if your processor recognizes Inferno to have been your.... master.”

“That has already happened” the security director nodded easily. “About the astrosecond I picked up his energy signature. He owns me, and now my programming is back to its normal function.” He looked at Inferno’s blue optics with affection and care. “I am back to my function” he repeated, almost whispering. The red Autobot returned the security director’s glare with an appreciating smile, then they both turned back to the Prime who seemed much less amazed by their reunion.

“You have paid a terrible price, and you knew this would happen when you went on this mission to rescue them.”

“How did you find us, by the way?” Sunstreaker asked. “It wasn’t like we told you where we were going.”

“Nor did we know about the battle station’s location” Jazz added.

“You didn’t. But when I was peeking through security holes in Turntide’s name, I spotted Inferno’s name in the report. You see, he is and has been my responsibility, I could not ask any other ‘Bot to save my own master for me.”

“So you have blown your cover as Turntide to save me” Inferno pointed out, and lifted his hand. A moment, and Red Alert’s sensitive helm was under his comforting palm. Both of them seemed quite oblivious to the other Autobots’ presence in the room. They also ignored the fact that, being the security director of the Autobot army, Red Alert had outranked Inferno who was only a warrior like many others.

“I couldn’t have kept it up forever, anyway” he replied. “Sooner or later Soundwave would have noticed that a dead Decepticon general is reading his messages from Iacon. He would have mislead us if I had been doing it for too long.”

“Whatever anyone would say, I’m glad you came for us” Inferno whispered so quietly that only the security expert was able to pick it up. “I still can’t believe you survived. I was afraid that you were in the mansion then, and later when I realized you might have been elsewhere, I feared that you have starved to death like you once mentioned you likely would.”

“And I would have, if Chromedome hadn’t been with me at the time. He deactivated my slave coding as soon as he noticed that it was doable. I was without an owner at the time, you see.”

But now he wasn’t, not anymore. He rested his back kibble against the mech whom he believed to have died many vorns ago, and Inferno leant closer to his delicate helm sensors, and whispered something inaudible.

“Do not start that again, please” Jazz noted. As a few pairs of optics gazed at them questioningly, Sunstreaker turned to Optimus.

“You should have seen how intensely they celebrated their happy reunion when they were in the privacy of their cabin....”

“And when they were not” the third in command added with an equal parts of amusement and discomfort. Now that made Optimus Prime stare. Was Jazz blushing? _Jazz?_ What were these two Autobots doing on their way back to Cybertron?

“Red Alert, Inferno. I suppose you both know something has to be done about your.... unbalanced relationship.” He still very much hated the idea of slavery, and the fact that his security director would be enslaved to another Autobot in his army didn’t sit well with him. He liked the over-sensitive, untrusting mech too much to allow any possibility of abuse. At the same time, he would have been blind not to notice how fond these two were of each other. And not just that. The way the security expert had rested his back against Inferno spoke of an immerse level of trust. Red Alert, who had been up in arms constantly for the past three vorns, had been relaxed and almost carefree during this debriefing.

“Unbalanced relationship?” Inferno repeated. “Excuse me?”

“He means your complicated situation with Red” Jazz translated. “Slavery” he helped out, when the red mech still didn’t seem to understand.

“Give him a few more breems till it clicks” Sunstreaker murmured. “Prime, if you don’t mind, my chassis is still in a mess and these welds need painting as soon as possible.”

Optimus looked up at the frontliner, and took in the sight of the many silver welds criss-crossing his mostly golden frame. He took in the rare sight, then turned to Jazz who was also wearing signs of recent medical attention.

"We still don't know why the Decepticons were building a station that far from Cybertron. Jazz, resign ample personnel on solving this sullen puzzle."

"Yepp, Bossbot."

He dismissed the two Autobots after he thanked their heroism on the Decepticon base, and inwardly sighed. He was left alone with the master-slave pairing. He felt the urge to help, but it wasn’t like he could have done anything. Deactivating the slave code was sheer impossible – that’s how it was intended to be, and according to Red Alert, it switched back in the very moment he had picked up his master’s energy signature. The only option would have been separating them for the indefinite future. But, by the position they were sitting on the other side of his table, Optimus guessed one would need the entire army to unravel them.

“Red Alert. We have always been honest with each other, I expect you to maintain this.”

“Yes, Prime.”

“What was the worst thing that Inferno had done to you while you were enslaved to him?”

“He had to sit through an entire monsoon season cooped up in a dirty old mansion” Inferno had replied for him without hesitation.

“Well, I was about to say one specific moment of that” Red Alert giggled. “We have rescued two strangers, one of them is now a Decepticon medic, and I had to recharge on the same level as where they were housed. I admit, it was my idea to place Glit in the room right next to mine, but his presence was still unsettling.”

“Well.... yes” Inferno admitted, as Optimus Prime’s questioning gaze fell on him. “But it started with Red Alert sending me out in the worst acid rain after he picked up a fading energy signature.”

“And two quartexes before that, I have woken you from your sweetest recharge because I couldn’t see the lights of Tagan Capital during the night” Red Alert said apologetically. His master hugged him silently, remembering the farm that he had lost to the war, and Horsepower who protected him with his own frame during the attack. Now Red Alert was the only thing he had left. He was unspeakably relieved to see him online and functional, as security director, no less. He was certain that the pretty city-mech liked his new position, and he was doubtlessly the best choice for the task.

“Inferno. How and why did you get Red Alert?” the Prime now asked.

“My last owner, the aforementioned Turntide, had asked what I wanted as a reward for saving his spark” Red Alert replied. “When I asked him to give me back to any of my former masters, he sold me to travellers going in the opposite direction. That’s how I ended up in New Argent.”

“And from the first time I’ve seen him, I don’t think I had a choice” Inferno continued. “It was blatantly obvious that we needed each other.”

The Prime couldn’t help but notice how they kept speaking for each other, and he could see how their back kibbles still maintained physical contact even when they were talking to him.

"Red Alert. I suppose your choice is to have Inferno in your team from now on?"

Two pairs of optics looked at him in awe and hope. "I thought.... we wouldn't be allowed to stay together. The Autobot Ethics Code very clearly bans slavery."

"Yes, it does" Optimus Prime nodded. Both were under the impression he was smiling behind his mask. "Although freedom is more important than any rigid regulation, isn’t it?"

Red Alert was about to start a tirade on how other Autobots tended to bend and break rules anytime he was not watching (or they thought he wasn't) but then he noticed Inferno's silent nod. He was ready to argue the Prime, for his own safety, but his newly reactivated slave coding prevented him from saying the opposite of his master's opinion. Something he had yet to re-discover urged him to agree with the others.

"In your case, Red Alert, freedom means that you are given a choice. Do you wish to be with Inferno again, do you accept the consequences that obviously come with this?"

Red Alert looked into his master's blue optics, then turned back to the Prime while resting his helm against the larger red mech's chest-glass.

"Of course, yes."

\------------------------

**What happened to the others?**

Most of New Argent’s inhabitants didn’t survive the attack. Mouser and GranMac were among the casualties.

Click took Shine in after his master’s death, although he still refused to accept the pleasure-bot’s services. His library later became the meeting point of the few surviving villagers.

Shine had been legally freed by unanimous vote. He had put immeasurable effort into maintaining contact with those who moved from the bombed area to join the fight, and his peaceful hub evolved into one of the most important neutral organizations.

Sideswipe followed Cliffjumper and they became Autobots with only a few orns difference. Cliffjumper very quickly adapted to his new lifestyle, but Sideswipe kept daydreaming about the time he could return to a peaceful Cybertron and continue farming.

Bulkhead completed his training as spacebridge specialist with flying colours, but the Petrex Academy fell under siege two orns before his graduation. The students have activated the Academy’s educational bridge and escaped. Some of them joined the fleeing neutrals, others picked their side in the war. Bulkhead chose the latter.

Cog and Wheel were in agreement that the Decepticon philosophy was appealing to them, but when they had heard that the manufacturers of Best, Quote and Ever had already signed up for Megatron’s army, they decided they were unwilling to join the same side. Instead, they found an economical niche of managing trades between the two factions and the neutrals.

Shine’s co-molded, Leader, was found alone and malfunctional in an empty fortress megamiles away from the settlement where he had been sold. How he ended up there remained a mystery even after he was taken to his only known relative. Later he became a principal of the neutral hub and he was the one who suggested they contact Bulkhead who would help them leave Cybertron for the relative security of faraway worlds in space.

The Turbo Team members were of the few Autobots who remained online after the war had ravaged Cybertron. The refiner they had bought at the auction became the key of their survival in the harsh environment. He later died a hero when a marauding Decepticon horde tried to kidnap him.

Skyfire disappeared while he and Starscream were exploring an organic planet just before the war broke out. He was found about a hundred thousand vorns later on Earth, where he joined the Autobots.

Glit noticed how much the great Decepticon army was in need of compassionate and well-trained field medics, and joined them. This had later enabled him to help the wounded soldiers of both sides, so he didn’t regret his decision. After the war he joined the Kiss Players singing group.

Inferno found his Certain Special Someone in the person of the femmebot rescue specialist Firestar. To those who feel like writing mech-preg, I hereby give explicit permission to continue this story with Red Alert becoming the caretaker of their sparkling Flare-Up while the parents are more involved in direct combat. Other than that, please PM.

_To all those who favorited, commented or just followed: thank you for all your support! I couldn’t have done this without your encouragement. Dear anon, thank you so much for the main idea and please let me know if you’ve read this!_


End file.
